Moments of Grace - Season Two, Act Three: No Mortal Lock
by Parlanchina
Summary: Grace has found her feet at the BAU, which is easier said than done when some of her less 'official' talents come to the fore. With a pair of brothers hunting people in Spokane, an omnivorous house-cleaner in Kansas City and the return of Frank, the team has their work cut out for them. And then they get a call from a sheriff with a problem - a sheriff who's heard of Grace before.
1. Prologue

**Essential Listening: Annie Lennox – Sisters are Doing it for Themselves**

0o0

The bar was heaving, filled with a weekday crowd who were determined to get a bit of winding-down in before they had to think about their next day of work.

They had – somehow – managed to find an empty table at the back of the room, sufficiently far away from the wall-mounted flat-screen TV for them to hear each other's voices.

SSA Grace Pearce leaned against the improbable wooden ledge that ran around the outer wall of the room, watching her companions watch a man at the bar.

In theory, they were here to celebrate her passing her American driving test, but even outside of work they couldn't stop themselves profiling. It was more than a habit by now, it was ingrained – an intrinsic part of their make-up.

They could no more turn it off than Grace could her magic.

The man they were watching was tall, reasonably handsome and oozing confidence. He had moved in on Prentiss as soon as she'd reached the bar, as if she were somehow magnetic.

"We've only been here five minutes," Penelope Garcia hissed, eating the obligatory bar peanuts that seemed to materialise in every pub Grace had been at in America.

"Yeah, but look at her," JJ observed. "She broke away from the group. The guy saw her alone, felt confident and made his move."

"She doesn't seem to mind," Grace remarked, amused, as Prentiss beckoned him to follow him over. Grace eyed the man up, dubiously: from what she'd seen of her, Emily Prentiss had taste – and this guy looked every inch a stuffed shirt. She doubted Emily would have any time for the man.

"Ladies, this is Brad," said Emily, handing out the beers. She added, with obvious relish: "A _real_ FBI agent."

Grace felt the mood shift immediately. Somehow, she managed to keep from grinning.

"Oh, wow," she said, brightly, as JJ and Garcia schooled their features into attitudes of surprise and admiration.

Poor Brad. Poor, _poor_ Brad.

"Really?" Garcia asked, brightly.

"_Really_," Emily confirmed, clearly enjoying herself.

"No way," said JJ, as Emily and Garcia shared a speaking look.

Brad was looking really rather pleased with himself. Grace gave him her best 'winning' smile.

"That's exciting," said Garcia, and Grace nearly snorted beer out of her nose when she asked – in her ditziest voice – "What's it like at Quan-ti-co?"

"It's – uh – quite impressive," said Brad, oozing smarm.

"What department are you in?" JJ asked, with a calculating smile.

With a move he _must_ have practised for hours in front of the mirror, Brad turned to her, put on his best suave face and said, "That's classified."

"Oh no, really?" said Grace, in as disappointed a voice as she could muster.

"I'm afraid so, Ma'am," he winked at her.

Actually _winked_.

"Must be really tough, keeping all those secrets," said JJ, candidly.

"Well, you know, it's a skill like anything else," he explained, smoothly. "Carpenters are good at building stuff, measuring…"

By this point, Grace was fighting a losing battle against her eyebrows, which seemed determined to move skywards.

"… FBI's good at keeping secrets and kicking criminal ass."

Grace stared ahead, convinced that if she made eye contact with any of the others, she would burst. Even her _teeth_ hurt from not laughing.

"Wow," said Emily, and the women laughed as lightly as they could without giving the game away. "Well, somebody's gotta do it." She turned, suddenly excited. "Oh! Do you have to carry your gun and badge with you wherever you go?"

Grace and JJ shared a look. This was going to be _epic_.

"Affirmative."

Grace lost the battle with her eyebrows and they shot under her fringe; fortunately, Brad was totally focussed on Emily.

"Can we see it?" she asked, with just the right level of anticipation.

"See what?"

"Your badge," Emily flirted.

"Please?" Garcia begged.

"Just one tiny peek?" Grace cajoled.

"I'm sorry, that's –"

"Classified," the four women chorused, nodding.

"Figures," said JJ, reaching into her purse; Garcia was pulling hers out of her voluminous bosom and Prentiss was reaching for hers, so Grace slipped her badge out of her jacket pocket, nice and slow.

"Of course," said Emily. "Tell me, Brad, does it look anything like this?" she asked, holding up her badge.

"Uh, or this?" JJ asked, pointing at hers.

"Or this?" Grace waggled her badge in the air.

"Or maybe this?" Garcia asked, holding hers up.

Brad stared at them all for a moment, mesmerised by four identical grins, before turning and bolting out of the bar.

They burst out laughing, unable to hold it any longer.

"'Criminal ass'," said JJ, reaching for her phone, which had started ringing. "'It's a tough job'," she said, deepening her voice.

Grace snorted, stealing JJ's chair while she went to take the call.

"Agent Jareau…"

"Wow," said Emily, still chortling.

"Why would anyone try that so close to Quantico?" Grace asked.

"Because they're a moron," Emily grinned. "And they don't expect 'chicks' to be working for the FBI."

"Well, we _are _'good at keeping secrets'," Grace joked; the others laughed.

"Lady, you are officially in my top eight," said Garcia, clinking glasses with Emily. "I am so blogging about this later. Clink me."

She turned and clinked with Grace, too; Emily followed suit.

"Congrat's on your license," said Garcia. "You're officially one of us, now."

"One of us! One of us!" Emily chanted, and Grace laughed.

"Getting there at any rate," she smiled.

JJ came back, looking apologetic.

"Sorry, ladies…" she said.

"Oh," said Garcia, putting down her barely touched pint.

"Oh," Emily echoed.

Grace set her own drink down, mildly annoyed at the criminal element for not being able to keep a lid on it for even one night. The mood had already shifted from jovial to serious.

They left their four, mostly full pints of beer on the table, looking abandoned and forlorn. They'd have to pick up where they left off, later.


	2. Open Season

**Essential Listening: Monsters, Band of Horses**

0o0

It hadn't taken JJ long to put the files together for the display, and Grace had helped Garcia find and put up a map of the (regrettably immense) crime scene area, while Prentiss phoned the guys. They'd all trooped in wearing roughly what equated to 'civvies'. In most cases, this wasn't much different to what they wore at work – the girls were dressed for going out, of course, badges pinned to wherever they could – but Hotch didn't even look like he'd left.

Not for the first time, Grace wondered if he had some hidden room at Quantico somewhere – like the bat-cave, but for suits.

Prentiss and Grace were heading back to the situation room when SSA Derek Morgan arrived. He wolf-whistled at them and nudged Dr Spencer Reid in the ribs, as if to say 'Look at _that_'.

They ignored him. Grace wasn't in much of a joking mood right now. She'd seen the case file.

"You're wearing a dress," Reid observed, as they fell into step together – Morgan had veered off to collect Gideon, en-route.

Grace looked down at herself.

"Oh God, is that what it is? I've been wondering all evening!" she exclaimed.

She took off her shoes and hung them on the back of the chair; Reid stared at her.

"What?" she asked. "You try concentrating on corpses in heels."

He raised his eyebrows, and she guessed that he wasn't too put out by her abrupt manner because there was a hint of amusement about his eyes.

"They pinch," she said, by way of an explanation, and handed him a case file.

His expression soured as he opened it.

Grace took a chair as he assimilated information at a disturbing pace.

She knew that he wouldn't mind her sarcasm too much. He knew how much she disliked dressing up for nights out, and she was reasonably certain he'd been playing on that.

He tapped his fingertips on the back of her chair as they both read and reread the files.

Though they had all been very welcoming to someone who might be described variously as an enemy invader, a bit of a mystery and a right pain in the arse, she and Reid had become pretty close rather quick.

They understood each other's need for quiet, and for uncomplicated company. They both had parents who, as much as they loved them, had lost their minds. They'd both been through hell in the last year. They had been there for each other when they'd really, really needed it.

The result was that Grace was spending a good deal more time on Reid's sofa than in her officially billeted room at Quantico, and that Reid's recent emotional problems were melting away faster than anyone could have predicted.

This was not going unnoticed by the team.

No one had said anything, but these were some of the best profilers in the world. Grace could feel them watching her whenever Reid was around.

Emily was doing it now, in fact.

Grace met her gaze and the other agent flashed a grim smile before returning her attention to the case file in her hands.

She shifted in her seat, suddenly aware of how close Reid was standing. His proximity didn't bother her – and she didn't give a hoot what people might make of their friendship – but she knew it would bother Spencer if he ever noticed that it was happening.

It was only a matter of time before someone started a staff betting pool on the two of them.

Given how absorbed he became when he read, this was currently quite unlikely. He only ever noticed people watching him when he felt guilty – his inability to lie was endlessly endearing – and as far as he and Grace were concerned, they had no reason to feel guilty at all. They were friends, and that was that.

He shifted away from her when JJ came in, wanting a better view of the screen. The assembled agents arranged themselves around the room as she flicked through to the right slide.

"A year ago, victims and their vehicles disappeared from Washington State. They were found two-hundred miles away in the remote woods of Idaho," she began, as Morgan and Gideon strolled in.

She clicked her remote and two sets of crime scene photos flashed up on the screen.

"Courtney Jacobs, twenty-four, and Shane Everett, twenty-five."

She hit the button again and the images shifted to display the victims' unusual wounds. Grace sat forward, frowning. Something was off about them – they weren't bullet wounds, as far as she could tell.

"Autopsy revealed similar entry and exit wounds through the chest," JJ added.

"Ballistics?" Morgan asked, stirring his coffee.

JJ shook her head.

"No bullets were found."

"I don't think we're looking at bullet wounds," said Grace, running speculative fingers over the autopsy report in her file.

"Some kind of stab wound?" Garcia asked, perplexed.

"No, not quite…" slowly, she shook her head. The answer was on the tip of her brain. She could _feel _it.

"It looks like they were out there for a long time before they were killed," Prentiss mused, flicking through her file.

"At least six or seven days," JJ confirmed.

"What happened in that week?" Morgan wondered aloud.

Garcia winced.

"I don't wanna know," she said, quickly.

"Look at the way they're dressed," said Reid, thoughtfully. He pointed at the next set of pictures. "They didn't voluntarily go into the woods like that."

Grace nodded. Wrong shoes, wrong jacket… they looked more like they were heading to work than into the woods.

"Yeah, neither did this man:" JJ clicked the button and a fresh set of image flashed up. "Found yesterday with similar wounds," she told them. "There's still no ID."

"Okay," said Garcia, scribbling a note in the back of her diary. "So I'm gonna look for missing persons in Washington."

"Look everywhere," Gideon advised as she turned to go. "We don't know where this victim came from. We only know where he ended up."

Garcia nodded at him on her way out of the door.

"Kills both males and females," Reid observed.

"Victims are found with their clothes on," Hotch added. "No degradation, no experimentation – doesn't look like he's interested in either."

"A serial killer with no sexual preference?" Prentiss asked.

"That'd be a first," Reid remarked, surprised.

"Maybe they're not getting off on the kill," Grace theorised. "Maybe it's the chase."

_Like us_, she added, mentally.

They reassessed the files in front of them.

"Broken nose – and bark's embedded in his face," said Hotch, scanning the crime scene photo for the latest victim. "Looks like he ran into a tree."

"Now, how do you miss a huge tree?" Morgan wondered aloud, tearing his eyes from the map of Idaho Grace and Garcia had tacked to the wall, earlier.

"Too busy looking behind you," said Hotch.

Grace frowned, flicking back through the file to the autopsy report. She scan read the list of injuries.

"None of these are defensive wounds," said Reid, as Grace came to the same conclusion.

"Courtney Jacobs' hands are torn up," Prentiss pointed out.

"Shane Everett's only got one shoe on," Morgan added, thoughtfully. "It's like he ran out of the other one."

"They sustained numerous injuries and just kept going," said Hotch.

"Fear can make you reckless," Grace murmured.

"Only on thing you run that hard for," said Gideon, darkly. "Your life."

The thought that had been hovering on the edge of Grace's consciousness finally bubbled to the surface.

"They're arrow wounds," she said, suddenly. "Clean puncture wound, through and through, no bullets or gunshot residue…"

"Arrow wounds?" Morgan echoed, peering over her shoulder as she squinted at the autopsy photo of the first victim.

"That's why all the wounds are straight through." She pulled out the scale measure that was printed on the edge of every autopsy page and lined it up against the picture.

"There's no fragmentation, so we're looking at alli's, not carbons… 0.5 or 0.8mm."

She looked up, suddenly aware that the room had gone quiet. "Aluminium, not carbon fibre," she elaborated. "I did archery on the weekend when I was at high school."

"Arrow wounds," said Hotch, nodding slowly. He glanced up at Gideon and met his gaze. He gave his friend a grim smile.

"They're being hunted."

0o0

'_One man's wilderness is another man's theme park' – Author Unknown_

0o0

The mood on the jet was quiet.

Oh, they'd got their guys alright – the Mullford brothers were both gently cooling on a mortuary table in Idaho, along with three of their victims. No case involving a death could ever be described as 'good', but sometimes the completion of a tough investigation could be greatly satisfying.

This, Grace reflected, wrapping yarn around her fingers, was not one of those cases. The sheer quantity of drivers' licenses that had been pinned to the inside of the Mullfords' kitchen cupboards was a staggering testament to three (maybe even four) decades of 'hunting accidents'.

Three decades of people that no one had been able to help.

They hadn't deserved what they'd got, and while it was difficult to feel bad for the brothers, Grace had to concede that they really hadn't known any better. Living in almost complete isolation within their uncle's skewed world view had programmed them to be serial killers from a young age. The propagation of a tradition from one generation to the next – killing without compulsion.

Because that's just what you _did_ in hunting season.

She sighed, deftly twisting her hook through the yarn.

It was like a page out of an instruction manual: _How to Build a Serial Killer in Six Easy Steps._

She snipped the end of her yarn and wove in the ends, nodding at Morgan as he came back from chatting with the pilot. He joined Prentiss at the table across from Grace; she too, looked lost in her own thoughts. She glanced up as Morgan sat down and then continued to stare out of the window.

"You okay?" he asked, settling in.

Emily gave him a half-smile and made a non-committal sort of sound. Grace knew how she felt.

"I've never seen you look so, um…" Morgan continued, looking away.

"Quiet?"

Morgan shrugged.

"What's up?"

Prentiss took a breath.

"Bobby Baird asked me a question that's sticking with me," she explained, tiredly.

"What was it?" he asked, gently.

"She asked me how they could do it," she told him. "How those men could hunt and kill people in the woods."

Morgan looked away for a moment and Grace's crocheting slowed right down. It was a sticking-with-you kind of question.

"What'd you tell her?" Morgan asked.

"That they don't think like we do," said Prentiss. "But the truth is that we _do_ think like them," she finished, sounding deeply uncomfortable.

"Yeah, we do," said Morgan, understanding her mood. "Because it's our job. We need to know how it feels."

There was a pause as Prentiss tried to marshal all her thoughts into some sort of cogent order. She needed to get this out there – needed Morgan to reassure her, if he could.

"We hunt these people every day," she said, slowly. "The question is, how different are we – us and them?"

Morgan nodded and they both fell silent.

Grace finished another crocheted flower and tucked her work away inside her bag.

The answer, of course, was 'not that different at all'.

There had been times when Grace had been afraid of what she might do – aware of that darkness that hid inside every 'normal' person, just waiting for its chance to burst forth and wreak havoc. The trick, as far as Grace could tell, was keeping it under wraps. Choosing to ignore that part of you that denied the humanity of the people around you and _not_ barging them out of the way on a busy street, our keying your ex's car, or smashing that bottle of alcopop into that bitch's face.

It came down to who you wanted to be, and that was a question that Grace had asked herself a lot over the last few years.

Some people, like Simon, found ways to justify the darkness – others never felt they needed to. She'd come across a lot of people who had just ignored the question altogether, and more, still, who had been unable to resist their own, personal darkness, no matter their intentions.

Being able to see it in people was part of being a copper, when you were often obliged to watch it bubble up to the surface at a football match, or outside a nightclub.

Thanks to their uncle, the Mullford brothers hadn't even known that there _was_ a question.

Grace sighed and went to make a drink. Sometimes this job sucked.

Her pocket buzzed: she frowned at the name on the screen. She had transferred the bare minimum of contacts to her new phone, but she hadn't seriously expected anyone to call. She checked her watch before answering.

"Why are you even awake? It's like two thirty in the morning there."

"Hello to you, too," the phone groused and Grace smiled, unable to stop herself. She had missed the girl's voice.

"Alright Alice, what's up?"

She extracted her box of teas from the cupboard, glad that she'd remembered to bring some this time. She didn't know how they managed it, but American tea tasted all kinds of wrong.

"I'm _bored_," Alice complained. "Dad's out, Cross Bones is empty. Max and Sophie moved out a week ago – I've already cleaned the flat three times. I'm _bored!_"

Grace laughed quietly, aware that some of her team mates were trying to sleep.

"I figured you'd still be up – and _you_ haven't called me since you got there."

"I know, our kid. I've been busy…"

"You _promised_," Alice whined; Grace suppressed a grin as she balanced the phone on her shoulder. She could pretty much hear her friend pouting.

"I know, I know," she said, "but you really ought to be asleep."

"Why?" Alice demanded. "I don't have a tutor on a Sunday and there's nothing else to get up for."

There was a pause where Grace could here a teaspoon clinking against a mug. Clearly a chat and a cuppa were in her immediate future, whether she approved of Alice's nocturnal habits or not.

"It's been really boring since you left," her young friend complained. "Nothing ever happens anymore."

Grace snorted.

"You mean to tell me that the entire criminal underworld collapsed just because _I_ left the country?" she scoffed. "I'm flattered."

Reid, who had wandered over in search of a snack, raised his eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes and nodded at the phone as Alice continued, "You know what I mean. You make things happen. Things happen around you – you're a 'happener'. Things are more lively when you're around. Now it's just… dull."

"It's not as much fun as it sounds," Grace said quietly, hoping that Reid had missed the cloud that had passed over her features as she'd squeezed past him. "And speaking on behalf of innocent bystanders, it's not much fun for anyone within a two-mile radius of me."

She slumped back into her seat; Prentiss had, by this point, put her headphones in – though Grace was fairly sure she hadn't turned her MP3 player on. Morgan had drifted back to the other end of the jet.

Even so, she lowered her voice when she said: "I wish I could stop them happening at all."

She rubbed her face. Alice, who was clearly reassessing her part of the conversation, apologised.

"I didn't mean –"

"I know you didn't, love. It's been a long day."

She sighed. There was a pause at the other end of the line; Grace braced herself. She could always tell when Alice had bad news, her pattern of breathing changed.

"You got another letter," she said, in a small voice.

"Burn it," said Grace, without hesitation. "And anything else that comes through. I want no part in it."

"You can't just run away, Grace," said Alice, with the hint of an apology in her voice. "A wise woman once told me that it doesn't matter how long you ignore something for, it doesn't make it go away."

Grace stirred her tea, speculatively.

"Perhaps she wasn't as wise as either of us thought," she said, wearily.

She heard Alice sigh. Both women knew that any letter that arrived from now on would be consigned to the flames.

"What's your new team like?" Alice asked, changing the subject.

"They're really great," Grace smiled. JJ brushed past her on her way to the tiny kitchen. "They've all been really welcoming. You'd love them."

"Well, that's something," said Alice, and both women smiled, aware that Alice ever speaking to any of them would constitute some kind of minor miracle, given how shy she was. There was the sound of a packet of biscuits being opened. "Have you found a flat, yet?"

"No – although Garcia has lined up some viewings for me tomorrow."

"Nice places?"

"No idea," Grace chuckled. "She told me to trust in her super powers, so we'll see."

"She has super powers?" Alice sounded impressed.

"She does when it comes to finding things," Grace said. "We could probably do with one of her at Cross Bones, except I'm pretty sure they broke the mould."

0o0o0o0

"I have to admit, when you said 'super powers', you really meant it."

Garcia grinned, contentedly picking cranberries out of her muffin.

"Ask and thy will receive," she teased, as Grace leafed through the three prospective properties left to see. They had spent a cheerful but exhausting morning looking over flats and houses within an easy commute of Quantico. It was lucky, she supposed, that she had sold her own house over a year previously and didn't have to wait for her father's to sell. It gave her a few more options.

"There's always a silver lining," she said, aloud, rereading the details of the 'inner city apartment' she was seriously considering.

"What's that?" Garcia chirped, dusting off her hands.

"Hmm?" said Grace, who hadn't realised she'd spoken. "Oh, er – nothing."

She saw Garcia's eyes narrow as she glanced up. You couldn't spend every day with a bunch of profilers without picking up a thing or two.

Pre-emptively, Grace gathered the papers together.

"Where to next?" she asked, stuffing the remains of her own muffin in her mouth.

Garcia pulled out a purple, glittery notebook that never failed to make Grace smile.

"We've got three more," she told her, crossing appointments off her list. "These ones are a little further out –" she tapped the invisible boundary of Quantico and its environs on the map, "– nice areas, quieter than the city." She glanced at her new friend. "I wasn't sure which you'd prefer."

"Either," Grace shrugged. "I grew up in the country, moved to a town when I was a teenager and lived in central London for years."

"And now?" Garcia asked, picking up her electric orange handbag.

"I'm not sure," Grace admitted, following suit, She nodded to the waitress as she followed Garcia out the door, towards her fabulous car. "Washington has a different quality of loud, from what I've seen so far."

"You really liked that apartment up town, huh?"

"Guilty," Grace laughed and they grinned at one another. "But it wouldn't hurt to look at the last few. You never know."

0o0

"Thanks," said Grace, as the broker hurried off to another meeting.

"No problem, ma'am – have a nice day!"

Grace shook her head as he drove off.

"What?" Garcia asked.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to how nice everyone is over here." She shuddered and Garcia laughed at her. "It's like being stuck inside an episode of _The Waltons_ or something."

They walked to the car. Garcia watched Grace, speculatively.

"You still set on that apartment, up town?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Grace, leaning against Esther's bodywork. "That second one with the pool was very tempting. Bit out of my price range," she added, on Garcia's nod. "I wasn't fond of that last one, though."

They both looked across the street at the house they had just come from.

"Why?" asked Penelope, gazing at it. "It's nice enough."

Grace briefly toyed with telling her new friend that she was one hundred percent certain that the house was haunted, but dismissed the idea. What if she told the others at the BAU? Being British made her weird enough in the office as it was.

"I just didn't like the vibe, is all," she said, after a while. "I love the area though…"

Garcia snorted.

They both knew that Grace was referring to the second to last house they had seen. It had started out at the bottom of the list for several reasons, not least because Grace had been intending to rent a place, rather than buy it. The elderly couple that had shown them around had been lovely, though, and had kept both women entertained with their jokes and bickering – so much so that they had nearly missed the next appointment entirely.

When they arrived, the old woman had been chasing off the realtor with a pair of gardening shears; the man had unwisely suggested they cut down the vast array of roses in the front yard to make the property more saleable. Grace had neatly ended the argument by pointing out that she was here for a viewing and she thought the roses were beautiful. The realtor had fled.

The house had a larger garden out back, and Garcia had caught Grace looking out at it with a faintly proprietorial air, planning where she would put the vegetable patch. She had assured her friend that she was only looking for rental properties, but with a little less conviction than before. Then the old man had shown her the library, a large but oddly cosy room at the back of the house – almost an extension of the garden, the way the wisteria and tomatoes were trying to get in through the window – and Grace had gone very quiet indeed.

It was two streets away, and both women knew that if Grace thought the area was okay, her mind was entirely on _that_ house.

"Yeah," said Garcia, keeping one eye on Grace. "It's really pretty around here – and not too far from the AMTRACK. Only a thirty minute commute. It's peaceful."

They both leaned on the bonnet of the brilliantly orange car and gazed up at the late spring sky. It was cloudless and sunny today; all around them were the sounds of people industriously enjoying the weekend weather. Across the street, a group of children were leaping in and out of a sprinkler that had been set up on someone's front lawn, shrieking happily. The middle-aged couple next door were leaning on their fence and watching them, clearly greatly entertained by this display of innocent exuberance. People were walking their dogs, fixing their cars, playing with their kids.

"Makes you wonder how many of them are serial killers, huh?"

Grace snorted.

"Pretty much," she said, stretching her legs. "Still, the illusion is pleasant. I think I saw an ice-cream shop a couple of streets back – can I tempt you?"

"You already bought me lunch," Garcia protested, but Grace laughed.

"Yeah, but you've made flat hunting a great deal less tedious."

Garcia followed her along the sunlit pavement.

"You're only looking to rent, though, right?"

"Hmm?" Grace gave her a sort of half-shrug. "Oh, yeah…"

Garcia grinned to herself.

Grace was going to buy a house.

It was a foregone conclusion.


	3. Legacy

_**Hey, so a couple of people were asking about updates – I tend to update by or around 6pm GMT on Fridays, unless it's something like Christmas, or I accidentally end up stage managing a twenty-four hour show. Thanks for the reviews, you guys – it makes my tiny world go around **___

_**0o0**_

**Essential Listening: Bodies, Drowning Pool**

**0o0**

The wheels of the trolley squeaked and bounced over the tiles as he woke up. His body didn't feel right – he was exhausted and bloody. Right now, he felt every one of his sixty three years. He had been running for so long.

He tried to lift his arms, but found that they were strapped to the trolley beneath him – so were his ankles. He struggled against them.

He became aware – how he hadn't noticed before, he didn't know – that the man pushing the trolley was whistling. It was a cheery tune, but it echoed oddly in the dark corridor. Something about it set him on edge.

"Wait!" he cried out, struggling to see the man properly. "Wait! Wait!"

The man ignored him. He tried to get a better look at his face and realised that he was wearing some kind of mask across his mouth and nose. He badly needed his glasses – he could barely see. Or was it his glasses at all?

His head swam as he tried to focus. Tried to remember.

"Just – just look at me! Please!" he begged. "Is this…"

He caught sight of another trolley, through an open doorway. The whole set-up did have a sort of clinical feel to it – he looked again at his companion. He was wearing medical scrubs.

His heart – which had been trying to escape through his throat, calmed down a little.

"Is this a hospital?" he gasped, with great relief. "Did I make it out? I made it?"

They trolley squeaked past another open door; this time, all he could see was a furnace, already burning. The view was accompanied by a flash of intense heat, and the fear that been fluttering around his heart gripped him.

He began to sob.

"This isn't a hospital," he moaned.

This is hell.

He started to shake. He couldn't control it – it was as if all of his limbs were trying to escape of their own accord, only there would be no escape. He had made that quite clear. The masked man pushed him onwards, into a room that the old man's blurry senses told him was drenched in blood. There was so much of it he could smell it.

"No!" he shouted, as if it would give his murderer pause. "No!"

He knew, somehow, that no-one would hear him, but he couldn't help it.

There was a dead, metallic tang in the air. The man in the scrubs came to a halt and calmly places his glasses onto the old man's face. He had lost them what seemed like a lifetime before, when this nightmare had first begun.

His vision clearer, he could see the sprays of blood across the light hanging above his head.

"Please, no – please – don't –"

The man stepped out of his line of vision and he struggled against his bonds. He couldn't see him. He _could_ hear him, though, rummaging through what sounded like a tray of medical implements. They're metallic. Efficient.

His murderer swam back into focus above him, holding a selection of scalpels and saws.

The old man screamed.

0o0o0o0

Grace finished the report with a flourish and dropped the file on her 'out' tray.

At some point, she knew, someone would collect it and deliver it to wherever the front page required. In her case, this was generally Agent Hotchner, or Agent Gideon, and it seemed odd to her that she and the other agents in the bullpen couldn't just drop them off, given their offices were less than fifteen feet away.

For Grace, who was used to a department whose idea of filing was launching a file into an appropriate looking box and hoping that the IPCC* didn't do an audit, this seemed a little over-engineered.

She had yet to see anyone actually collect the files – they just seemed to disappear at random points in the day. If she had been back home, she would have ascribed it to a supernatural phenomenon, but here that sort of thing was distinctly less likely. She supposed the FBI filing clerks had some form of ninja training.

The idea made her smile.

She pulled the next bunch of files – which she had been working on at the cadet hall – out of her bag. The pamphlet for the house on the sordidly named 'Apple Tree Lane' fell out onto her lap.

Grace picked it up suspiciously.

The morning after she and Garcia had visited the house, the details had arrived in the post; they had taken to turning up in odd places ever since, almost as if they were stalking her. So far this week, Grace had pulled them out from under her pillow in the cadet hall, out of the little toaster she'd got in her room (mercifully unplugged at the time), out of the pocket of a jacket she hadn't worn in months, and out of a book she was certain she had only just brought back from the shop in Washington.

She'd even had to rescue them from the shower cubicle the evening before, when they'd got a little over-eager and lodged themselves behind the soap dish.

She left them on the radiator overnight to dry out, weighted down with an interesting rock she'd found on a long ramble in the park with Morgan and his dog, Clooney.

"This is just getting silly," she admonished the documents, and then hastily glanced around in case anyone had heard her. She stuffed them back in her bag in annoyance.

"I'm only looking for a rental, anyway," she grumbled to herself, "until I'm sure that this'll work out."

Annoyed, she strode over to the little kitchen area they all frequented and pulled a carton of juice out of the fridge. She'd very quickly realised that the office kitchen politics were no different here than they had been in London and had started labelling her food after her third carton of soya milk went missing. She'd added a sly anti-theft charm to them too, just to be sure, and this appeared to be working.

She was shoving the juice back in the door of the fridge, between a bottle of ice tea and someone's flask of soup, when she became aware of a nervous presence a few feet away.

Surprised, she looked the man up and down. It wasn't often you came across anyone in the bullpen who was so obviously broadcasting his emotions. Something about the way he was standing suggested that he was a detective, but he seemed a little young for the title. He was fingering the badge around his neck absently, gazing out across the bullpen.

"Hi," she said, and he looked around sharply; the pattern his fingers were making along the edge of his badge altered slightly. "Are you looking for someone in particular –" she glanced at the badge "– Detective McGee?"

"Uh –" he glanced down at his badge and immediately stopped fiddling with it. "Yeah – uh – Agent Jennifer Jareau?"

"Up the stairs, door on the left," Grace pointed it out.

"Thanks," said Detective McGee, and then paused. "Uh, Agent –?"

"Pearce. No problem," said Grace.

She watched him go, intrigued. You didn't get many detectives with such blatant OCD. In her experience, charisma was half the battle.

Grace sat down at her desk and huffed in frustration. She pulled the house information out from under her computer keyboard and dropped them in her desk drawer, which she locked.

"And stay in there," she muttered under her breath, reflecting that a touch of OCD wasn't the worst thing a detective might have to put up with.

0o0

They were scanning through Detective McGee's little black books, trying to make sense of what he and JJ were telling them. They were sad little records of forgotten lives; Grace flicked through hers with a heavy heart:

'_Donald Laos, forty-seven. Black/ Chinese. 5"8', 160lbs. Brown eyes, greying black hair; small scar above left eyebrow. Homeless. Meth' addicts. Possible Schizophrenic.'_

There was even a brief description of the clothes Donald usually wore. She glanced at the stack of books McGee was standing guard over at the end of the table and frowned.

That was a lot of missing people.

"You aren't sure whether anyone is, in fact, missing?" Hotch asked, striding around the room with one of the little notebooks. McGee watched him, hawkishly.

"No I – I am sure, I just can't seem to convince anyone else of it," said McGee.

Grace couldn't tell if he was more agitated by the discussion, or the fact that they were all toughing his books.

"But no official investigation?" Hotch asked, sitting down.

"No."

"Sixty-three people can't be a coincidence, right?" JJ asked, handing the detective a glass of water. He accepted it gratefully, his eyes on the books.

"Reid, any stats on the percentage of, um…" Morgan trailed off and sat down with his coffee. "Well, I don't really know how to phrase the question."

"Homeless who go missing?" Reid asked. "The very nature of homelessness suggests a lifestyle of fluidity. Yet, honestly, they're not as transient as you would think. They generally stay in small, well-defined areas, based on familiarity and what services are nearby."

"Where they feel safe," said Grace, with a nod. "Their comfort zone."

She watched Hotch watch McGee constantly rearranging his notebooks.

"So – so you're saying they don't just disappear?" he asked.

"Not normally," Reid told the detective. "But, I mean, that doesn't preclude the possibility."

"Names, addresses, descriptions," said Garcia heavily, leafing through a notebook. "Do… Do you have any information that might help us find them again?"

Detective McGee looked a trifle sheepish, almost glancing away before answering.

"I – uh – didn't have a need for it at the time."

Grace nodded again and picked up another notebook; she knew that feeling of indirect guilt well enough.

"You know, if there _is_ something happening, it isn't your fault," she said, handing her original book back.

He gave her an awkward little nod.

"Garcia, do you have enough here to see if they've been reported missing by someone?" Emily asked.

Garcia pulled a face.

"I don't – I don't know."

"I ran them through our computer and they all came up blank," said detective McGee.

The agents all looked up, surprised.

"None of them turned up deceased?" Gideon asked. He'd been reading through an article on the award that McGee had been given, but now he scrutinised the man. "You checked the morgues and the hospitals?"

"I – I – I have checked everywhere, sir," said McGee, clearly frustrated.

"Simply being gone isn't a federal issue," said Hotch, with a frown.

"We're gonna need an official invitation into your jurisdiction," Gideon explained.

Grace watched as McGee rocked backwards slightly. This didn't bode well, she reflected.

"An – official?" he repeated, stumped.

"Police Chief, Chief of Detectives," said Hotch. "It has to come down through the chain of command. We have no authority to look into this."

"Um… I – I don't know I can do that," said McGee, agitated. The team shared rather a speaking look. He collected a few more notebooks back into his pile.

"Unless we're officially asked, we can't help you," Hotch explained.

"Jurisdictional issues aren't open for debate," Gideon apologised, briskly, "sorry. It's out of our hands."

"Uh, Hotch…" said JJ, quietly, "there could be sixty-three victims here."

He paused to consider this for a moment, looking around the room; they gazed back, wondering where this was going to go.

_Sixty-three victims…_

Grace tried to will him on.

_It's got to be worth a look, come on Hotch!_

She suspected that everyone else's expressions were similar, since – after a few moments of tension – Hotch subsided slightly.

"Well, I suppose you and I could go back with the detective and talk to his commanders," he said. "And try to impress upon them the serious implications."

"Thank you," said McGee, nodding furiously. His relief was palpable; he really cared about these people.

"If we get an invitation, we can send for the rest of you," Hotch glanced at Gideon. "I just don't want to give the appearance that we're running over them."

"I'll wrap my class up," said Gideon abruptly. "If anything changes, let me know. I should be available by four."

He strode out of the room, Hotch close on his heels.

"JJ, be ready in thirty," he called over his shoulder.

"Agent – uh – sir –" McGee paused, agitated. "He took my book," he said, weakly.

"Uh – if you could leave your notebooks with us," said Prentiss, as gently as she could. "We can unofficially go over them and maybe develop some more information."

McGee ran his hands over his books nervously; the assembled profilers shared another look.

"Uh… How – how about I show you which people aren't around anymore, and you can copy down all the information?" he suggested, firmly removing the notebook from Garcia's hands.

She stared at him, astonished.

"Okay," said Morgan, fairly. "Well, you heard Agent Hotchner. You got thirty minutes to brief us on sixty-three people."

There was a brief pause as Detective McGee assimilated this. He picked up the first notebook.

"Okay," he began.

Grace reached for her pen; it was going to be a _long_ thirty minutes.

0o0

'_Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.' _

_Herman Melville_

0o0

They had copied their hastily noted down information onto record cards and tacked them to a board. It was only just big enough. The four profilers sat back, unsettled – there were so many of them.

Too many.

"Damn," said Prentiss; Grace rather had to agree.

"That is a lot of people," Morgan observed, dryly.

"Homeless men, homeless women, runaways, prostitutes and drug users," Reid listed, running his eyes across the board.

"There is no way they're disappearing on their own," Grace remarked, arms folded.

"_Could_ all of their disappearances be coincidence?" Emily asked aloud.

"Yeah – uh – technically it wouldn't really be a coincidence, since a number of these people share high-risk traits, which throws the curve off," said Reid. Grace rolled her eyes as the team took their seats. He just couldn't help himself. "You – you see the word 'coincidence' implies that –"

"Hey – hey, kid," Morgan interrupted. "We do not need a vocabulary lesson right now."

Reid chuckled, wincing.

"Right," he said. "Sorry."

"What was it the Yorkshire Ripper said about his victims?" Morgan asked the room.

"'The women I killed were filth,'" Reid quoted effortlessly, "'bastard prostitutes that were littering the streets.'"

Grace sighed. She'd studied this case, even been taken on a ghoulish 'tour' of the key locations by a more senior officer. She didn't believe in capital punishment, but Peter Sutcliffe was one person she might be persuaded to waive the rules for.

She joined in as Reid completed the quotation: "'I was just cleaning the place up a bit.'"

He glanced at her, giving her a sort of worried half-smile. They could both see where Morgan was going with this.

"He's a house cleaner," said Morgan, peering up at the board.

_All those names…_

Prentiss looked aghast as Reid needlessly defined the term: "Mission-based killer who believes his murders are helping society."

Morgan nodded slowly.

"These guys devolve rapidly until they're just killin' machines," he said.

"Wha- and our hands are tied by jurisdictional concerns?" Prentiss asked, annoyed.

Grace rather had to agree, but would have used more colourful language.

"This is nuts," she allowed.

"What are we supposed to do?" Morgan asked. "If we don't follow a city's jurisdiction, no one's ever going to ask us for help."

Grace huffed in frustration. He was right, even if it meant sixty-three victims becoming sixty-four.

"We do it by the book," he continued, as Prentiss shook her head. "And we pray that no one else gets hurt in the meantime."

Grace, who had never had much time for prayer, deepened her frown.

"We'd better hope Hotch and JJ get us that invitation," she said.

0o0

Derek had left them compiling in the situation room, pulling together everything they'd got to formulate a comprehensive profile while they could. Whether they got this case or not, they'd pass it on to McGee – albeit in an unofficial capacity.

None of them had any doubt anymore that this guy was out here.

He strode into Garcia's office, hoping she had something that could narrow this down for them. She looked decidedly forlorn as he leaned over her chair.

"Alright, you beautiful thang, you," he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "Talk to me. Tell me you got somethin' I can work with."

"Oh, I wish I could," she sighed. "But I've gone through forty-one names so far and none of them are reported missing in any database."

"Come on girl, not one?" Derek asked in obvious disbelief.

"No," said Garcia. "I even went Interpol on it. Big fat zero."

"Damn."

"It's unbelievably sad, isn't it?"

Derek looked at his friend and patted her shoulder as her searched continued to falsh up on the screen in front of her, '_NO RECORDS FOUND. NO RECORDS FOUND'._

"Alright, just keep doin' your thang, alright?"

"Yeah," said Garcia, quietly.

"Let me know if you find anything with the rest of the names."

"'kay."

0o0

Spencer grimaced at the file on the table. They had been at this for hours, looking for precedents, building a profile. He glanced up as Prentiss went to fetch a fresh coffee; Pearce was shaking her head at her notes, clearly annoyed.

"You okay?" he asked, quietly, counting on their 'understanding' for her to know that he wasn't trying to ruffle her feathers.

She blinked at him as if her current train of thought had been entirely derailed.

"Yeah," she said, wearily. "Just pissed off that no one but Detective McGee spotted this."

Spencer nodded.

"I get the impression not many people listen to him," he offered.

"The OCD?" she asked; sitting back. "Mmm. I can see the average room full of detectives not taking him seriously. Damn' shame, really, since he's the ideal person to notice something like this."

"The compulsive categorisation of familiar items or people," Spencer said, in that oddly descriptive way he had of agreeing. "Everything has its place."

"And he really knows about it if it's not there," Grace observed. She smiled. "Pretty ballsy of him to fly out here and demand our help – how much do you want to bet he hasn't told his governor?"

"No bet," said Prentiss, coming back in. "Hotch is going to be pissed when he finds out."

"Not as much as he'll be if they don't let us in," said Spencer, his mind on the profile.

There was a murmur of agreement from the other members of the team. Jurisdiction or no, leaving this one alone would be a hard-sell at the BAU.

"Garcia's got nothin'," Morgan announced, from the doorway.

"Nothing?" Prentiss asked, stunned.

"Nada."

"So, you're telling me sixty-three people vanished off the face of the earth and not a single person missed them?" Grace asked in disbelief.

Morgan grimaced and flung himself into a chair as if it had personally offended him.

"No one who put it on paper," said Spencer, thoughtfully.

Everyone turned to look at him and that squirmy feeling that had been with him when under scrutiny since Georgia rose unhelpfully to the surface.

"Think about it, guys – aside from Detective McGee, the people who'd notice the absence of these people are the homeless themselves."

Prentiss nodded sadly.

"We need to get out there and talk to them," she said gravely.

Lost in their own dark thoughts, they all jumped as Gideon stalked in, fresh from his last class of the semester at the training college.

"Any news?" he asked, briskly.

"Haven't heard from JJ or Hotch," said Morgan. He gestured towards the heavily laden board. "Garcia went through all the names, but couldn't find a single report to hang an investigation on."

Gideon's eyes flicked over the report cards and Spencer guessed he was reading the names: Kimberley Hermeed, Travis Phung, Jorge Suares, Ben Carraway…

"We've been compiling preliminary profile thoughts based on the limited victimology that we have," he said.

Gideon subjected them all to a level stare before looking back at the board.

"Profile? We don't even have this case, yet," he remarked.

"We just want to be prepared in case we _are_ called in," Prentiss explained.

"We don't have enough other work to do?" Gideon asked the room at large.

"This is a bad one, sir," said Grace, and he turned his gaze, with its occasionally unnerving intensity, on her.

"Gideon," said Morgan. "He's a house cleaner."

"With sixty-three potential victims," Spencer added.

The senior agent's expression darkened considerably as he scanned the faces of his team. They weren't messing around, Spencer knew the way Gideon thought. The speed and level of potential devolution would already be chasing around his mind.

He moved to sit down.

"What have you come up with so far?"

0o0o0o0

*Independent Police Complaints Commission, UK.


	4. Left For Dead

**Essential Listening: Left for Dead, Citizen Cope**

**0o0**

It was a mark of how bad this one could get that they finalised the profile on the jet, liaising with JJ at the Kansas City Police Department. It seemed to Grace that the flight had taken no time at all, despite their having crossed the majority of a continent.

They hurried into the building, ignoring the vaguely hostile expressions on the detectives' faces.

Grace had a shrewd suspicion that Detective McGee had just made himself even more unpopular than usual.

_Good for him_, she thought, as they rounded a corner and spotted Hotch. He nodded to them and glanced over at McGee, who was talking to a very irritated Head of Homicide.

"Over the last four weeks it's been about four girls, two guys…" he trailed off when he saw them.

Grace winced. His governor did _not _look pleased to see them. He put on a reasonable show, however, and shook hands with Gideon.

"BAU," he said, looking them over, his body language closed and standoffish.

"I'm Jason Gideon." Gideon waved at his colleagues. "Agents Morgan, Prentiss, Pearce and Doctor Reid."

"Captain Al Wright," he acknowledged, with a curt nod.

Hotch approached, rather swiftly. Grace wasn't sure if it was to cut Captain Wright off before he could voice his displeasure, or whether was simply as eager to get things under way as they were.

"If you want to get your squad together, Captain, we can start giving the profile," he said, briskly.

"Already?" he looked at them, surprised.

"We've been working on it all day," said Reid, helpfully. Grace elbowed him in the ribs and he gave her a look of faint confusion.

"Oh, have you now," said Wright, suspiciously. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Gideon smiling slightly. She suspected he was rather enjoying himself.

"Just out of an abundance of preparedness, yeah," said Reid, cottoning on.

Grace allowed herself to meet Gideon's gaze and had to look away sharply, trying not to smile too much at Reid's tone.

Captain Wright took this with a reasonable amount of dignity.

"Give me a few minutes, guys," he said, drifting off across the office proper, and glowering at McGee, who was hovering by the door.

Hotch shook his head slightly.

"I'm not sure if he's really okay with this, or he's sure we're wrong and wants to see us embarrass ourselves," he said, candidly.

The team nodded. They could all feel the hostility in the room. Sixty-three people and counting, however, was a bloody good reason to risk losing friends, however.

It wasn't all that surprising, Grace mused as she dropped her bag under Detective McGee's unnaturally tidy desk. But it was always better to be a bit embarrassed and wrong about this sort of thing than one hundred percent right and do nothing about it.

She stared at the series of pencils lined up on McGee's desk.

"Sometimes," she said aloud, "absolute sanity can be exactly the same thing as madness."

"Pardon me?" Detective McGee asked, rather tremulously.

Grace, who had neither realised that he was there – or that she had spoken aloud, jumped. She took in his rather hurt expression and blushed.

"I'm sorry," she said, with almost an audible wince.

"It's okay," he said, dismissively. "I realise I'm a little odd – not quite the right… I don't fit in."

He placed his paperwork in a neat pile on the table, lined up – Grace noted – with the edge of the in-tray with pinpoint precision.

She frowned and glanced behind her; being McGee in this department must really suck. The others were on the other side of the room – there was no way they would overhear.

"Sometimes when I'm interviewing someone I don't like, their shoelaces tie themselves together," she told him; he gave her a look of pure disbelief. "I can't stop it happening."

His expression shifted to incredulity, but there was a hint of a smile there, now.

"Seriously," she hissed.

"You're not just saying that?" he asked, smiling a little more.

Grace looked around to make sure no one would see and held her hand over one of the pencils on Detective McGee's desk. He followed her gaze, puzzled, and froze as the pencil gently rose off the table and began to spin madly in mid-air. He gawped at Grace as she handed it to him almost apologetically. A broad smile began to break over the man's large, honest face.

"There's room for all sorts of people in this world," she said, with a small shrug. "And on the force."

She paused as he twirled the pencil around his fingers; regarding him for a moment, she added: "Detective McGee, there are sixty-three people who would have been forgotten and ignored if you hadn't gone all the way to Washington and made the FBI fly halfway across a continent to come and look for them. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you aren't a good copper."

He tore his gaze away from the pencil and met her eyes. McGee picked up one of his neat little notebooks and nodded, as if he was filing the comment away somewhere to examine later.

"Come on," said Grace, shrugging off her jacket and – in deference to the detective – folding it neatly over her bag. "Let's catch this bastard before he makes it to seventy."

0o0

The officers and detectives ranged around the department weren't exactly hostile, but they weren't especially encouraging, either. Grace got the distinct impression that about a third of them thought the whole thing was greatly entertaining. She glowered at one of them until he stopped smirking.

When everyone had finally finished shuffling around and finding pens that worked, Hotch took centre stage.

"We're going to provide a psychological profile of the man we're looking for," he said. Around the room people shifted from aggravated or amused to alert and businesslike. "It contains some unusual specific personality traits that someone out there is bound to recognise."

"Which'll make him relatively easy to locate," said Gideon. "A long-lasting negative impression he leaves on anyone he might meet."

"We have a term for the killing behaviour this UnSub displays," said Morgan. "'Cleanin' house'. Fixin' what's wrong with the world."

"He's the kind of person who sees what they perceive as a problem and – unlike the rest of us – his solution is out of all proportion to it," Grace explained. "So, where we might give a homeless person a hot meal and a place to sleep to try to get them off the street, he believes that killing them is the only way to remove them from the area. To him, they're a virus. He's just trying to save the world."

Reid nodded.

"He's deeply rationalised this behaviour, and while he certainly knows the killing is wrong he – he truly believes that he's doing the world a great service."

"By doing this 'public service', he has put himself above the rest of the world," Grace added. "Largely because – in his eyes – no one else has the vision or courage to get the job done."

"Because of this, ultimately, this type of UnSub becomes a loner," said Morgan. "There will not be too many people that can still tolerate him. Now, if he does have a relationship at all, the person will not be his equal. It'll be someone subservient to him."

"He'll be fastidious," Reid expanded. "Tending towards Obsessive Compulsive Disorder."

Detective McGee looked up, interested. This would be an UnSub he would really have an insight on, perhaps more so than other perpetrators.

"And he'll have an overwhelming sense of indignation toward the things that he's judged to be wrong," Reid went on. "He won't even consider the reasons why someone might disagree with him."

"He sounds like a real jack-off," said a detective in the front row. The agents nodded: that was sort of the point.

"Exactly," said Morgan. "Class-A scumbag."

"Detective McGee started noticing the disappearances a year ago," Prentiss said. "The UnSub probably had a stressor at this time. The death of a family member, or someone who had some semblance of control over him." She paused before adding: "Right now, no one has control over him."

They let this sink in for a few moments. There were a lot more serious expressions in the room now than there had been five minutes earlier.

"It's probable that he isn't currently working," said Reid, picking up the thread of the profile. "After this many victims and the devolution that it brings, a job just wouldn't leave him time to practice his true calling."

"Which is?"

Captain Wright let the question hang in the air for a moment. It was Hotch that met his gaze.

"A predator," he told him. "A killing machine. By now it's become all he thinks about."

Grace watched the man's expression shift. No matter how annoyed he was with them, he'd give them their shot – and crow about it endlessly if it all came to nothing.

0o0o0o0

Grace left Detective McGee introducing Gideon to another group of transients, mostly kids this time.

It was great to see their faces light up when they spotted him – one of the few people for miles around who cared about them as people, not as statistics. It must have made a pleasant change, for someone to see them as a priority.

She strolled a little further, careful to stay within Gideon's eye-line. Her gaze was caught by an ancient looking woman, peering out from a kind of cardboard tent. Their eyes met and Grace changed direction.

"Cold night, mother," she remarked, staying just outside the woman's circle of cardboard.

A line of glass jam jars were set out in front of her; unlike the woman and her dismal surroundings, these jars were scrupulously clean.

"Always is, out here." The woman looked her up and down, squinting through the gloom. "You're not selling religion, and you don't have any food. Cop?"

"FBI."

"FBI?"

The woman was surprised; Grace flashed her badge almost apologetically. Back home, in her old unit, she had quite happily straddled the borders of the supernatural and law enforcement worlds, being universally hated by both sides. Out here, in the dark, without a team who understood that when Grace called someone a witch she _really_ meant it, she felt lost. The rules were different, and there was no one on this side of the Atlantic to teach her.

"Why you botherin' us?" The old witch stared up at her, suspicious.

"Someone's hunting out here."

"Everyone's huntin' out here, honey." The woman cracked a disturbing, toothless smile. "Some 'one'?" she asked, carefully emphasising the word.

Grace nodded. House cleaning was the exclusive perversion of human monsters. The old woman nodded, sucking at the inside of her mouth. She patted a square of cardboard beside her.

"Take a seat at my fire, daughter, and talk with me."

Grace smiled at the obvious lack of fire and sat, cross-legged on the cardboard. She knew a challenge when she heard one and her lack of hesitation had earned her a grim grin. She gave her a potted version of the profile and the old witch gave a thoughtful grimace.

"Sounds like a darlin'."

"Know him?"

She shook her head.

"But I'll be lookin'."

Grace thrust cold fingers into her trouser pocket for her card. She made a movement in the air above it with her hand before passing it to her new friend. Grimy fingers closed about the small rectangle of cardboard; she nodded, tucking it into her clothes. If she saw something, she'd let Grace know.

"Not often people bother with us," she observed.

Grace read the question in her face.

"Detective McGee."

The old woman nodded.

"Nice boy. Lets me read for him." She glanced at Grace, who shrugged.

"You can if you want," she said. "The future doesn't worry me, mother, it's the past I can't shake."

"You wear it like a shroud," the woman said, shuffling cards that seemed to have appeared from nowhere between her hands. "Widow's weed, baby's breath –" she looked sharply up at her, her rheumy eyes glinting in the half-light. "You keep holdin' it so close, daughter, and it'll eat you alive."

"I know it," said Grace, wondering what the old witch had let consume her.

"Makin' friends?"

Grace recognised Gideon's voice and squinted up at him. How long had he been behind her?

"Cross my palm with silver, son, and I'll read your future," the woman offered, adding a dramatic cackle for the effect. The cards flicked back and forth between her gnarled fingers with an effortlessness born of a lifetime of practice.

"Thanks," said Gideon. "Another time. We have a killer to catch."

Aware that this was directed at her, Grace nodded to the woman and got to her feet, dusting herself off.

"Thanks for your help," she said, as Gideon looked on.

The old witch gave her a toothless smile.

"Oh, hello Molly," said Detective McGee, cheerily. He was putting on a brave face for his community, but Grace could feel his desperation. Probably, so could Molly. "You've met Agent Pearce, then?"

"Never got as far as names," said Molly, shuffling her cards. "Names don't mean nothin' to the likes of us, eh darlin'?"

She winked at Grace.

Knowing that Gideon and McGee were watching, she managed to stop the smirk before it made it all the way across her face.

"Nothing or everything," she observed.

Molly cackled.

"C'mon," said Gideon, moving off. "You keep safe out here, ma'am," he nodded to Molly, steering the detective away.

A grimy hand shot from within the folds of Molly's coat and grasped Grace's wrist. Not painfully, just enough to make her stop.

"Don't think you can run forever," she hissed.

"Not forever," said Grace, her heart pounding from the speed at which the old woman had moved. "Just long enough to find my feet."

Molly released her arm and surveyed her with knowing eyes.

"Be careful where those feet take you."

With a swift glance to make sure Detective McGee and Agent Gideon were occupied, Grace stooped and passed her hand over the line of jars, palm facing down. Flames leapt greedily in the bottom of each one, the sudden heat sending up a small plume of steam in the frosty air. The old witch cackled happily.

"Cold night, mother," said Grace, with a nod. Kindness repaid.

"Less, from now on," the witch croaked after her.

Grace quickened her pace to catch up with the others.

"Anything?" she asked, as she drew level. Both men shook their heads.

"Saw Reid and Hotch back there," said Gideon. "They got nothin'. This guy should stick out like a sore thumb."

"Accomplice?" Grace asked, running through possibilities in her mind.

"Maybe."

"Someone people out here would trust."

"You said in the profile that he was unlikely to have relationships," said the detective, frowning.

"Equal ones," said Grace. "If he has an accomplice then they'll be completely in his power, whether they agree with what he's doing or not."

"If no one comes up with anything, we'll work it into the profile," said Gideon, in a tone that suggested he was just as annoyed as they were.

They walked on in silence for a few minutes, back through the streets they had already canvassed. The eyes that watched them from the shadows weren't hostile anymore, just faintly suspicious; Grace thought she could detect some healthy disdain, too.

She wished there was something more she could do for them, some way to make their lives easier. McGee's dedication to his community was, she thought, a very good thing. Maybe once they caught this bastard, a few more people in the department might sit up and pay attention.

They paused in the lee of a wall while McGee approached a rough looking man in his sixties, motioning for them to stay back. Apparently this guy didn't like unfamiliar faces; after what she'd seen tonight, Grace didn't blame him.

"The likes of us?"

She turned to find Gideon studying her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Molly," he said, waving in the general direction of the old witch's camp. "She said, 'names don't mean anythin' to the likes of us'. She didn't mean me or detective McGee."

"I suppose she meant people who don't conform," said Grace, after considering which parts of her general weirdness would be the least painful to explain. "She's chosen to stay lost on purpose, and in a way I guess I have, too. Leaving my old team in England."

"You're runnin'."

It wasn't a question, but there was something about the way Gideon phrased particular statements that made you want to pretend that they were. This time, Grace couldn't resist.

"Always."

"From your father's death?"

Grace nodded.

While this was technically true, there had been other things besides burying the gentle old man that had made her want a fresh start. Nasty, wretched things that made her stay up all night reading to keep from dreaming, and (on the few nights she could) sleep with a gun under her pillow. She wasn't sure she could successfully lie to Gideon, so she kept her mouth shut.

"I need to know if you're going to keep runnin'," Gideon said. Again, he left the statement open, inviting comment.

"I'm a copper, Gideon. The case comes first."

"You're an FBI agent," he pointed out, gently, "part of a team."

Grace looked away. She had been part of a team in London, too, and look what that had got her.

_All the time I'm here I'll be running_, she thought, _even when I'm standing still_.

"I think one continent is far enough," she said aloud, and Gideon nodded, satisfied – for now.

They watched McGee talking animatedly with another man who had wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. Grace wondered what _they_ were running from.

"'Not all those who wander are lost'," Gideon quoted, and Grace smiled, surprised.

_No_, she thought. _Sometimes they're just looking for someplace to be._

0o0o0o0

Grace stared out of the window, watching as the jet skimmed over large, fluffy clouds, tinged pinkish in the dawn light.

They had stayed long enough to help with evidence collection and crowd management at the meat packing plant. There had been a point, early on, when someone had wondered aloud how they were going to prove the scale of the killing without any bodies, but they needn't have worried.

He might have incinerated his victims, but the detailed films of their last minutes were immaculately kept and catalogued. A random thirty second excerpt had been enough to turn most of the local detectives green. Much of the work at the crime scene had been conducted in a kind of raw, horrified silence.

She could imagine how they felt, after months of scoffing at the possibility of anything being wrong on their manor. Things were going to change for Detective McGee – and for the transients in his community. No one in the Kansas City PD was going to ignore them now.

Grace had seen few more harrowing cases than this one.

Her pocket buzzed, dragging her from her contemplation of the clouds.

The tail end of a text rolled past the screen: _'Max head stuck in fence – DIY fail. Will take picture. Can't stop laughing. 3 Soph xxx'_

Grace snorted. She didn't really need the picture.

Two of her former colleagues, Max and Sophie, had come up with her through training at Bramshill. They went way back. They'd recently moved in together in an effort to save rent, Max's long-standing crush on Sophie notwithstanding.

She was reasonably sure that Max would never, _ever_, do anything about it.

'_*facepalm* You and your hobbies ;) How's the new place?'_

She didn't have long to wait for a response.

'_Cold, but close 2 pub – can't complain. Re-tiled bathroom y-day, got all grouty. I'll try + send u pic…'_

There was a brief interlude in which Grace imagined Sophie attempting to work her phone – or, possibly, get Max's head out of the fence.

'_Stupid bloody thing. Emailed instead. Max sez if u laff he'll put itchin powder in ur knickers :p'_

Snorting again, Grace opened up her laptop. Sure enough, there was the picture of Max, head stuck between two staves of a garden fence. He was grinning and giving a thumbs-up – there was a mug of tea in his other hand. Pleased that he was being looked after, she wondered whether they'd called any of the others up to try and get him out.

'_Too late.'_ She texted. _'Besides, be a bit of a long-haul just to get at my knickers :)'_

The response was swift and more badly spelled than usual; she suspected that Sophie was laughing, too.

'_Vengince iz swet, he sez.'_

'_Have you got his head out yet?'_

'_Wot in front of our new neighbours? 4 shame.'_

'_Always knew he was a bit of an exhibitionist.'_

'_:p Nah. Still stuk. Geoff's comin ova in a bit, wiv a crowbar.'_

'_Why don't you just blow it up?'_

'_I've mist u gurl. Wen u gonna figure out America's crap + come home?'_

Grace blinked at the text, uncertain.

'_It's not that bad,'_ she started, but found herself unable to continue. She deleted the characters, thinking.

Putting the phone down on her case notes, she frowned, a little torn. As she brought her hand back, it caught the edge of the file, tipping the whole lot into her lap. Digging through them, she paused. Her fingers had – once again – closed around the estate agent details for the house in Apple Tree Lane. Thoughtfully, she pulled them out and flicked through. She was absolutely certain she had locked these in her desk at Quantico.

Putting a deposit down on a house after only three months in a new country would be completely mental…

She opened the booklet to the picture of the 'study', as the realtor had insisted on referring to it, tracing a fingertip over the glossy photograph. The room had had such a welcoming feel to it – cosy. Homely.

She glanced again at the phone.

Grace knew she couldn't go back, no matter how much she missed them. Some things you just couldn't undo, no matter how much you might want to.

She flicked open her phone and closed her messages. Checking that it was no longer obscenely early in Virginia, she punched in a number she hadn't realised she knew by heart.

"Harold? Hi – it's Grace Pearce. We spoke last week – yes, that's right," she smiled into the phone, sternly telling herself that the butterflies currently flapping around in her stomach didn't belong to her in the first place. "About the house – I'd like to make an offer."

0o0

'_Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.'_

_Charles Chaplin_

0o0

When Gideon had called them all into a meeting that morning, almost straight off the plane, this wasn't how Spencer had imagined it would go. Since Garcia had been waiting for them with a pack of Red Vines and an enormous bowl of popcorn, he suspected she'd had prior knowledge.

He hadn't watched a Chaplin film in years. It was the perfect antidote to one of the worst cases he'd ever worked (Georgia excepted). The team that had made themselves comfortable around the situation room were a good deal more relaxed than when they had left it, only a few days before. Spencer chuckled at the screen, thinking how good it was to hear them laughing after the last few days.

Periodically, he picked an air-borne piece of popcorn out of his hair and dropped it into an empty mug at his feet. He didn't understand what JJ found so very funny about bouncing the small, edible missiles off his head, but since she seemed to enjoy it and it didn't bother him at all, he ignored the majority of them, content to let them find their own way to the ground.

On the floor beside him, Pearce picked a rebound out of her collar and dropped it in the mug, shooting him a wink. She seemed different this morning – more focussed, somehow. More at home with herself.

It was odd, he reflected, as the team absorbed the cheeriness of the film, nothing in her behaviour had ever really suggested that she _wasn't_ okay, aside from a totally understandable breakdown about her father's awful death.

For a long time he'd been such a mess himself that he wouldn't have noticed if someone had danced past him, naked, wearing a tea cosy on their heads – and Grace had been such a solid presence, particularly for him. She'd spent several nights in a row, sitting up watching the Lord of the Rings and listening to his fears.

Watching her now, out of the corner of his eye, curled up on the floor beneath the projector, he wondered how he ever could have missed that Grace had been as much a wreck as he was.


	5. Of the Fading Light

**Essential Listening: Trouble, P!nk**

**0o0**

"_Thin rain, whom are you haunting, _

_That you haunt my door?" _

_Surely it is not I she's wanting; _

_Someone living here before._

– _Edna St Vincent Millay_

0o0

Derek flicked his phone shut as he came out of the elevator, still grinning at his sister's text. He pushed the door to the bullpen open and strode over to his desk, coming to a halt a few feet in front of it. Penelope was perched on the edge of Emily's desk; the two women and Reid, sitting at his own desk, were shooting one another worried looks.

He followed their gaze: the door to Hotch's office was closed. He and Pearce were glaring across his desk at one another.

This did not look good.

"What's goin' on?" he asked, dropping his bag under his desk.

"Don't know," said Reid, slowly.

"Hotch just came over and took her into his office," Garcia said, frowning. "Practically marched her up the stairs."

"He didn't look happy," Emily added.

"He never looks _happy_," said Garcia.

"Pretty boy, you and Grace are pretty tight," Derek said. "She said anything?"

Reid looked up at him, the very picture of innocence and clearly bemused.

"Uh – no?" he looked at Prentiss, who was also studying him pretty closely. "We're not that close, you guys."

"Uh-huh," said Derek, as Prentiss shared a speaking look with Garcia.

"Ooh, quick! She's coming out!" the latter gasped, jumping down from the desk.

Grace paused at the top of the steps. It seemed to Derek that she had narrowly prevented herself from rolling her eyes at the four of them, guessing that they'd been watching her. Hotch followed her down the steps.

"We have a briefing in twenty minutes," he told them, stalking past with a face like thunder.

"What was all that about?" Emily asked, as Grace pulled the drawer of her desk open and extracted her go-bag.

"What was what?"

"Oh, nuh-uh, that was somethin'," Morgan scoffed.

Grace shrugged.

"Must be a bad one if you're already packing," Prentiss observed, watching her.

"I wouldn't know," said Grace, checking through her files. "I'm not going with you."

"What?"

"Why?"

"Where are you going?"

"Nevada," she waved a file at them. "Someplace called Overton."

"That's just north of Lake Mead," said Reid. "I used to picnic there when I was a kid."

"What's in Overton?" Penelope asked; Derek could tell she was itching to google it.

"A sheriff with a problem," said Gideon, appearing behind Garcia and making her jump out of her skin.

"Sorry sir," she gasped, clutching her ample bosom. "I didn't see you there!"

Gideon ignored her.

"Asked for you particularly," he said, giving her a hard look. Everybody stared at her.

"He's a friend of my old governor," she said, after a moment. "I suppose he must have mentioned that I was over here."

"Somethin' about 'particular talents'."

Derek watched Gideon carefully. Something about his body language suggested that he was winding Pearce up, but he couldn't put his finger on what, exactly. Grace looked up, meeting Gideon's gaze for a second or two. It was the first time she'd met any of their eyes since she'd come out of Hotch's office.

"Care to elaborate on that?" Gideon asked.

It was just possible, Derek speculated, that she had seen the twinkle of amusement in his eyes. It was hard to tell.

"Not sure I have time," she flashed them a smile. "Put it down to my forensics degree."

She turned to Reid, effectively shutting down Gideon's line of enquiry. He didn't pursue it. Rather, he wandered off in the direction of his office, chuckling.

"What's the geology like in that part of Nevada?"

"Sandstone and rhyolite – mostly desert with vegetation around the town but scrub further out," said Reid, automatically.

"Rocky?"

"In some places," he nodded. "Pretty standard for a South Western American mesa."

"Good for digging?"

"I – uh – I actually have no idea." Reid sounded surprised – more that he hadn't known the answer than at her question. "Why?"

"You're hunting bodies," said Prentiss, with a knowing look.

"The sheriff has a hunch about grave sites," said Pearce, shutting down her computer, "but no evidence – and no funding."

"So he asked for help," Garcia nodded.

"He asked for you," said Derek, pointedly. Pearce glanced up at him, and then back down at her bag. "By name."

"I rather wish he hadn't," she said. "Have a good one, guys," she said, giving them a cheery wave over her shoulder.

"They watched her go, nonplussed.

"Why ever would that annoy Hotch?" Penelope asked.

"It wouldn't," said Derek, thinking hard.

Which meant something else had – something Pearce had quietly steered them away from discussing.

"What's with Grace?" JJ asked, hurrying over, a large stack of files tucked under one arm. "I just ran into her by the elevator, muttering something cryptic about soil density."

"Special request," Emily began, but she was cut short.

"Situation room," Hotch snapped, from the doorway. He vanished into the room without a backwards glanced.

The team exchanged a look. Hotch was not a happy camper.

0o0o0o0

Grace stared glumly at the maps in her lap. She'd managed to find a guide book and map in the airport, while she drank a liquid that was only nominally related to tea and waited for her flight. She suspected that Garcia's current overabundance of helpfulness was down to her insatiable curiosity, but right now she would take what she could get.

Overton was a small desert town in Clark County, Nevada, established in the mid-nineteenth century. It was substantially enlarged in the first half of the twentieth century, when a nearby town had been submerged under Lake Mead. It was located in the lower Moapa Valley and apparently had several archaeological claims to fame, including a museum dedicated to the nearby Pueblo Grande de Nevada (a reconstructed settlement) and a submerged B29 Bomber.

It was just over sixty-five miles north of Las Vegas, and was currently the social centre for the valley. There were mines producing gypsum, magnesite, kaolin and silica sand, some of which had been there for a very long time.

From what Garcia had been able to extract from her databases, there's wasn't a great deal of crime outside the background domestic stuff you got everywhere: a few arguments at closing time, the occasional grudge that bubbled up and turned an ordinary person into a cold-blooded killer.

The leisure and tourism section of the book had described Overton as 'Stark and beautiful terrain for the experienced hiker, which is particularly attractive to the geologist.' Looking at the maps, she could see why.

She could also see why Sheriff Hardy was having a problem. If someone had been dumping bodies out there, they had miles of unpopulated and undeveloped land to choose from.

The files Agent Hotchner had grudgingly handed her went back a long way; every year for the last ten, a woman had gone missing from Overton. Grace flicked through the pictures, ignoring the slumbering businessman in the seat beside her.

Their ages and descriptions were all over the map. Some had blonde hair, some had brown, two had black hair and one had red. They were all Caucasian, which was a start, but their backgrounds varied. Their professions ranged from a girls' soccer coach (Grace crossed the word out in her notes and replaced it with 'football'), a homemaker, a journalist, a bank clerk… one had been home for the summer, working on a postgraduate degree at LVU.

They were all low to medium risk victims, having steady employment for the most part, and regular patterns of behaviour. Easily stalked, but also easily missed. He'd have to use a ruse or blitz attack – from what she'd read of their files they weren't the kind of women who were easily taken in. Without the bodies they wouldn't know for sure.

They had all had so much to live for.

The women in the photographs smiled out at her. When these pictures had been taken they'd had no idea that their lives would be so cruelly cut short.

The level of detail on the victims was impressive: the Sheriff and his people had clearly done their homework. He had questioned friends and families, had his deputies canvass practically the whole town. There was even a timeline for the week preceding each disappearance.

In one or two cases, there had been an angry spouse or jealous ex-boyfriend, but for the most part, these women had been abducted part way through an average day. She took out the forensic report for the latest woman: no unknown prints, no unusual trace; the victim had been on the way back from the grocery store – by the time her car had been found, doors open by the side of the road, the ice-cream she had bought had entirely melted.

There was even a timed receipt. About three hours had passed before someone had pulled over by the car and called the police.

The keys were still in the ignition.

Grace sat back, thoughtfully. That took some doing. It had to be a ruse, surely, or she would never have pulled over. Or had she known her attacker? She flicked through the missings – surely they couldn't _all_ have known the UnSub. If Reid were there, he'd have been able to quote her a statistic on nine victims all knowing their attacker, over a lengthy stretch of time.

The seatbelt warning light began to flash; Grace packed her files back into her satchel with a sigh.

She wished the team was coming with her on this one. She could have done with the back-up. Bracing herself for the unsettling feeling of descent, she hoped that whatever was waiting for them in Utah wasn't too grisly. She checked her phone – by the time they landed it would be well past two, even allowing for the time difference. Any serious hiking would have to wait for the morning.

The last text from Hotch caught her eye: a reminder to check in with him at the end of each day. It irked her a little, having been used to the Guv' trusting her on her own. Closing up her phone, she reminded herself that she was new here, and still an unknown quantity.

_The less known, the better,_ she thought, remembering Hotch's expression that morning. Sheriff Hardy's call had prompted him to conduct a more thorough review of her file, where he'd found – alongside the usual stats on number of arrests and her case resolution record – significant quantities of information that had been inexpertly edited out.

It would have been done hastily and with little skill, if she knew her Guv'. He was a self-confessed Luddite, particularly when it came to computers. In a world where policing was becoming increasingly computerised, he used it as a sort of defence-mechanism, delegating everything he found tedious to junior members of the team. The two standard issue computers in the office had been tolerated only grudgingly, and she'd caught him giving her laptop dark looks on more than one occasion.

That said, redacting her file was a task he would have entrusted to no one else, given the last few years.

Agent Hotchner had taken one look at the blanked out sections and rung someone in London. The hapless administrator he had reached had chattered happily away about the 'weird stuff' that went on over at Cross Bones – and he (along with most of the Met') had known Grace's name.

He couldn't have told Hotch everything, or she'd be on a plane back to England right now, but he'd said enough to really worry him. A worried Agent Hotchner was apparently a very unhappy Agent Hotchner.

He had demanded to know – after marching her into his office – why everyone he spoke to in the UK went quiet when they heard her name. Grace had played the 'bewildered' card, but he hadn't really bought it…

0o0

"_Maybe you can tell me why Mr Thomson thought you were some kind of a psychic?" he asked, in quite a biting tone. "Or Sheriff Hardy, perhaps?"_

_Grace wasn't entirely sure how to respond. She seriously doubted, 'Because I am one?' would have helped, so she stayed quiet._

"_Are you professing to be a psychic?"_

_Grace winced. It was pretty much impossible to lie to such a direct question, which was why Hotch had rephrased it._

"_You are?"_

"_Yes, sir," she admitted. "Sort of."_

_Hotch slowly sat back in his seat, his expression inscrutable._

"_And you've used this – skill – in a professional context?"_

"_On several occasions," she nodded, tense._

_He paused, and for a mad moment, Grace wondered whether he was actually considering the prospect._

"_Under the supervision of senior officers?"_

"_Not always," she told him. "First few times, the Guv' came out with me."_

_He studied her for a moment, absently tapping his pencil against the file in front of him. It was one of his tells; she was fairly sure he didn't know he was doing it. Right now, it meant that he was puzzled._

_Grace wondered how transparent she could afford to be._

"_How does it work?"_

_At least he seemed to have accepted that it was an actual phenomenon, rather than carefully eked out bullshit._

"_Every scene is different," she explained, cautiously. "Sometimes a feeling will creep up on me that something's not right. Other times, it comes as a taste or smell, or a snatch of a song. I once followed someone singing seven verses of 'London's Bridge is Falling Down' to a child's body."_

_She frowned. That one had stayed with her for a long time._

"_Sometimes the victim is there waiting for me, confused and frightened – or dead calm and inquisitive. Occasionally they try to tell or show me something. Not all of them can, and not all of them want to. It's a very individual thing."_

_Sometimes it's just their screams, she added, privately. You never get used to that._

"_And you can just turn it on and off at will?"_

"_No…" Grace scratched the back of her neck, thinking. "Not everyone sticks around, and sometimes even the goriest scene won't say a damn' thing to me, but in certain situations, like large grave sites, I can –" she paused, trying to think of an adequate expression "– make myself more susceptible to it. More receptive."_

"_Meditation?"_

"_Not so much. More like putting yourself in the right frame of mind."_

_He watched her closely. She imagined that this was exactly how it felt to be on the other side of the interrogation table._

"_And you haven't made yourself 'receptive' while you've been here?"_

"_No sir. I haven't needed to. There haven't been any grave sites to identify, and by the time we got to the meat packing plant in Kansas City we had everything we needed."_

"_But you could have looked for more?" he asked, slowly._

_God he was hard to read, sometimes._

"_Theoretically."_

"_Why did you hesitate?"_

"_It takes a toll," Grace told him. "Migraines, nausea – my head sort of fills up with voices and feelings, and I can't turn it off." She looked at him. "You don't believe any of this, do you."_

"_I'm not sure," he said, frowning. "But Sheriff Hardy seems to, and he does need help. Ten missing women in ten years –he thinks it's the same guy." He passed her the case file. The Sheriff must have posted it in advance. "He also thinks you can help."_

_There is was again, thought Grace, that question that wasn't a question._

"_If all else fails I can fall back on forensics and behavioural science," she said, half-joking._

_Hotch nodded, slowly. Either he hadn't heard her tone, or he had decided to completely ignore it._

"_We have another case in Utah – you're on your own, here. I want you to assess the situation – if there is a serial abductor at work, we'll come out when we wrap this case up."_

"_Understood, sir."_

"_You'll check in with me every evening."_

"_Yes, sir."_

_He gave her a hard look._

"_The rumours about all the officers in your old unit having some kind of supernatural power?"_

_Grace licked her lips, carefully keeping her face under control._

"_You know coppers, sir," she said. "They like to exaggerate."_

_Hotch nodded, slowly._

"_I'm not going to share this with the rest of the team."_

"_Thank you," said Grace, in earnest._

"_But I will have to inform Agent Gideon."_

_He stood, looking stern and oddly forbidding._

"_If I find you've been over-estimating your capabilities, or keeping anything from me that could endanger the team then I'll suspend you, is that clear?"_

"_Crystal."_

"_Good."_

0o0

She wasn't comfortable lying to Hotch. He was a good agent and a good team leader, and she would rather earn his trust than keep things from him, but that couldn't be avoided right now.

She would have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

Grace stepped out into the Nevada sun and suddenly appreciated the fact that Overton was in the middle of a desert. The heat was almost a physical wall and she hesitated by the entrance for a few seconds before she felt acclimatised enough to walk across the hot tarmac.

Sheriff Hardy was waiting for her in a department four-by-four in the small car park outside the airfield. He was leaning against the car, watching the faces of her fellow passengers as they filed out the front door. The sheriff looked a pleasant sort of fellow.

He was a hearty man in his sixties, tanned and lined from a lifetime spent patrolling a desert town. His uniform was tidy, except for a small patch that was probably mustard on his sleeve. What had once been a head of chestnut curls spilled out under his hat, now more grey than brown.

She made a bee-line for him.

"Sheriff Hardy?" she asked, extending a hand.

A broad grin broke out across his sunny face. She thought he was probably one of those fortunate officers who could take the darkness in his stride and leave it at the office when he headed home. All except this one case.

"Inspector Pearce – sorry, _Agent_ Pearce."

"Grace."

"Call me Jesse, everybody does," he shook her hand. "It's good to put a face to the name, your old boss spoke very highly of you."

"And of you," said Grace, smiling. "You made quite the impression in London."

He gave a dismissive sort of shrug.

"It never does you any good, stayin' in one place all your life," he said. "I learned more on that secondment than I have in the last five years."

He laughed; a hearty, rich kind of laugh that put Grace immediately at her ease.

"That Charlie Lightfoot is a thing to behold," he said, giving her a conspiratorial wink. "Watched him take down things you wouldn't believe – well," he laughed again. "I guess _you_ would. You were all he could talk about when he came over for that conference, three years ago."

"I'll bet," Grace grinned. "Always did have a knack for finding trouble."

"Say, I hope I didn't get you in too much trouble with your boss," said the Sheriff. "He sounded pretty unhappy when he called me back this mornin'."

"Not nearly as much as the Guv' did," she gave him a wry smile. "Apparently half of my files have been 'accidentally' deleted."

Sheriff Hardy winced.

"I wouldn't like to have to explain Cross Bones to the FBI," he remarked.

"I left a lot of it out."

_Damn' near all of it, actually_, she thought.

He nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry if I dropped you in it," he said, "but we could sure use your help. I'll fill you in on the way to the house, if you like," he said, piloting her towards the passenger side of his SUV.

"The house?"

He gave her a sharp look.

"I'd feel more comfortable if you stayed with Lois and myself," he said. "I'm not sayin' you can't take care of yourself, but –"

"But I fit the victimology," Grace finished.

"And we're about due another victim," he told her, soberly.

"I'd be delighted to stay with you," said Grace. "As long as you don't mind."

"It'd take a weight off my mind," he admitted.

"I'd like to head straight to the department, if we could – get a head start."

"Sure – just as soon as I call my wife, or I'll never hear the end of it!"

Grace laughed, putting her case in the back of his car.

It was, to her astonishment, cooler in the SUV. It was a relief to get out of the sun. Even the ten minutes it had taken to cross the car park and introduce herself had been enough to make her wish she wasn't wearing a suit. Hopefully there would be a drugstore or seven-eleven near the Overton Police Department. If she was going to spend the next few days hiking through the desert she'd burn to a crisp without sunscreen.

Inwardly marvelling at how someone as pale as Spencer Reid could have grown up only a hundred miles away, she settled into the passenger seat, brushing away the momentary incongruity of the seatbelt being on the wrong side. Ignoring the feeling that she ought to be driving, she scanned the faces of her fellow passengers, still trickling out of the tiny Perkins Field Airport.

Could one of these people be their UnSub? Was the next victim walking past the SUV?

Not for the first time, Grace wished that villains still dressed in top-hats and dinner jackets. It would make life _so_ much easier.

"Sorry 'bout that," said Sheriff Hardy, climbing into the driver's seat.

"Not at all," Grace smiled. "Keeping him- or her-indoors happy is half the battle."

The sheriff chuckled, recognising the parlance, and they set off. Grace peered out of the window at her new hunting ground. Overton looked like a quiet but pleasant place to live; she had never seen this many palm trees in one go before. It was disconcerting. She could well appreciate how a series of disappearances might shake the community.

"You read the file I sent?" Hardy asked, watching the road ahead.

"Yes," said Grace. "But it would help if you could give me your version."

"Alright." He collected his thoughts for a moment. "Eight years ago I got a call – abandoned car by the roadside, 169 just south of the I-15. Keys in the ignition, door wide open. Hell, the radio was still on. Car belonged to Carol Lang – taught music at Mack Lyon Middle School. Steady lady, not given to just up and disappearin'. Checked her background, no boyfriend, close friends said she was happy, co-workers thought highly of her – she'd just adopted a cat. No reason to skip town.

"Didn't gamble, or drink too much. The car was clean, no foreign prints or trace. Nothing found at the scene, either – no tire treads, no footprints, nothin'. Like she'd vanished into thin air."

He stopped at a red light, a distant look on his face.

"Never seen anythin' like it," he said, softly. "It was like somethin' out of another world." He paused. "You're frownin'."

"The lack of evidence suggests someone who's thought through their forensics. Forensic counter-measures suggest an organised killer. Someone who thinks things through and learns from their mistakes. He's probably got an abduction kit of some kind."

"See, I knew you could help."

"Just speculating," she shrugged. "Go on."

"Anyway, like I said, she had no reason to run, so we figured she was in some kind of trouble," he told her. "We talked to neighbours, friends, family – none of them could think of anyone that would want to hurt her."

"You know, we get a lot of missin's around here – kids runnin' off to Vegas with dreams of riches or weddin' rings. Most come back pretty quick when their money runs out," he stated, as they waited at a junction. "You get the odd domestic where one of 'em will take off, but you find out they're with a friend, or relative. We don't get too many murders – bar brawls, the odd domestic gone horribly wrong – but there's nothin' like this. Also, generally, there's a corpse.

"Case went cold pretty quick, though we tried to keep it in people's minds," he continued. "We had it on billboards, in store windows – even got a spot on the local news, but there were never any leads.

"Fast forward to one year later, almost to the _day_, I'm standin' next to an empty car on the 169, door open, keys in the ignition," he sounded weary now, exhausted by it all. "Laurie Thomas, forty-seven – three kids. Stay at home mom. Ran a mail-order craft business out the back of her garage. Well-liked, no problems at home.

"It was Carol Lang all over again. Got a bad feelin' about it. Went through the usual motions and the case went cold. Eventually, people started sayin' she'd run off with some childhood sweetheart – but I knew Laurie," he told her. "There ain't no way in hell she would-a left those kids – or Mike, her husband. She would-a said _somethin'_ – but other cases came in, cases with leads or bodies.

"It got to be summer again and I was dreadin' gettin' a call out to another car. Felt like it was gonna happen no matter what, but it never did. I waited all summer, not a damn thing," he told her. "I even took the case files home over Christmas. That next year I took my secondment in London."

Some of the frustration faded from his face.

"Rattled around a couple-a departments for a while, and everyone was real polite in that strained, sarcastic way you Brits are when you don't want someone around."

Grace chuckled.

"Passive aggression is a way of life."

"You said it, not me," he grinned. "Anyway, I walked into a scene one day and this young kid tried to make a break for it – hurled some kind of fireball at us. Lightfoot took him down with a wave of his hand," he made the motion in the air above the steering wheel. "Just stopped him dead in mid-air. Half the cops there freaked out – I was so surprised I just stood there, and while everyone else was runnin' around like their pants were on fire, I cuffed the kid."

"He told me," said Grace, warmly. "Said he hadn't thought much of Americans until you came along."

"He requested a transfer for me before I'd even got back to the station," he chuckled. "You were up in Cambridge."

"Being fast-tracked through my masters," Grace nodded, suppressing the now-familiar twinge of revulsion.

"I saw a lot at Cross Bones," Sheriff Hardy remarked.

"It's that sort of place," said Grace, ruefully. "I have to say, it's nice to talk to someone who knows about this stuff," she admitted. "I'm pretty sure if I said anything back in Quantico they'd have me committed. Hotch is probably filling in the paperwork as we speak."

They both chuckled; their faces both dropped in perfect time.

"I got back home in the fall," he said. "Another year without a car at the side of the road. I started to relax," he said. "Of course, the next summer, we got another one – Melissa Landry, thirty-three, tourist passin' through on a hikin' vacation. She was supposed to meet up with friends in Las Vegas and never showed up. She was a waitress in a small town in Missouri – always punctual, always careful. When she didn't show up or call, and they couldn't reach her on her cell, her friends drove up to Overton and reported her missin'."

He scratched the back of his head, lost in reverie.

"They'd already talked to the hotel – she'd checked out on time," he told her. "They hotel gave us her car registration. I had a bad feelin' about it – I thought we were gonna find it by the side of the road, same as the others, but we never did. A few of the local businesses remembered her. She was a bright, bubbly woman…

"Anyway, we looked for weeks, until all the leads dried up and other cases took priority again. You know how it goes. Two weeks into the New Year, they found her car in the old sand quarry, burned out and pretty busted up. Had to ID it from the VIN on the chassis," he said. "As you can imagine, there wasn't much in the way of forensic evidence. There were some melted bottles in what was left of the back seat. I canvassed the local kids – one or two of them remembered the school troublemaker ridin' around in a car of the right make and model that summer."

"Putting him right at the top of your list."

Sheriff Hardy nodded.

"He'd left school by then – bad grades, bad attitude," he explained. "Damn shame if you ask me. He's a bright kid, he just didn't give a damn. Works in the donut shop on West Thomas these days. I talked to him and got the usual bull-crap. Soon as I told him it was a murder enquiry he suddenly became a lot more co-operative."

"Funny how that happens," Grace observed.

"Said he found the car at the side of the road, keys in the ignition," the sheriff went on. "He rode around in it for a while until he crashed and torched it in the quarry as part of some kind of drunken teenage party. Gave me the names of two other kids he used to hang around with – they corroborated his story."

Grace nodded slowly.

"Where is he now?"

"Still at the donut shop," Hardy told her. "Cleaned his act up after his Dad died. The old man used to beat ten kinds of crap out of him, from what I hear. He's manager now – got a pretty young wife and they're savin' up for their first home."

"Which rather suggests he's out of the running," Grace observed. "If our UnSub had been capable of developing a normal relationship with someone he'd probably have slowed down, or at least changed his MO."

"Not stopped?"

"Unlikely," she told him. "There's no devolution, but the compulsion to kill is there year after year. He's not going to stop unless we stop him."

"Hmm." The sheriff chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Plus he'd have been about twelve when our first vic' went missin'."

"I'd like to talk to him anyway," said Grace. "And look at anything you have on his father."

"You think the old man might-a passed it on to his son?"

Sheriff Hardy looked horrified.

"It's not impossible," she said. "I'd like to rule them out as soon as possible."

The sheriff nodded.

"I count three victims, so far," Grace pointed out. "When did the others go missing?"

"I'm getting' to that," said the Sheriff, pulling into the Police Department car park. "That summer it was a twenty-seven year old PhD student, visitin' her folks over the vacation."

"That's young, for him," Grace observed, taking off her safety belt.

"Yeah," said the Sheriff, "she was the youngest."

"And the oldest?"

"Laurie Thomas."

"Forty-seven," said Grace thoughtfully. "That's one hell of an age-range."

"That's part of why we didn't put it together right away," said Sheriff Hardy. He took the keys out of the ignition, but made no move to get out of the car.

From here, they could see the bustle of North Moapa Boulevard, busy today with a summer fete in full swing. A lot of the pedestrians were dressed for the sun, or for hiking. Tourists, Grace guessed. They all walked right past the Police Department, where Overton's finest went about their work behind the ornamental shrubs and sandy gravel.

It looked like the street was normally pretty quiet. Beyond the builder's yard across the road, the open mesa seemed to stretch on forever. It was, Grace reflected, the ideal place for hiding things you never wanted to be found.

"It was the same deal with Helen Parker," he told her. "By this point I was sure we had a serial offender. Convincin' the County Prosecutor's Office was another matter. That took another year, and another missin' woman."

He fiddled with his keys. Grace suspected the man was concealing a good deal of frustration under his unruffled exterior – and guilt. He was suppose to protect these women, and he felt he had failed them. It was something every copper felt, at some point in their career.

"Maggie Castelioni, late thirties," he told her, heavily. "Coached soccer for the local girls outside of work."

"Which was?"

"Secretary at the doctor's office," he said. "Everyone knew Maggie. It was the first time people listened. They were scared. Hell, they still are."

"It got the older cases reopened?"

"Even got two new deputies out of Vegas," he agreed, soberly. "Public pressure can do that. Local media ran the story every day for weeks. Anyhow, I had the deputies run up every lead we'd had on all five disappearances, and while they were that I looked into the records.

"All the women had gone missin' on, or around, the 19th of July, so I started there. I came up with three more. I hadn't caught them before because they hadn't been in their cars when they were taken."

"Interesting," Grace remarked, with a frown. "That suggests our UnSub has a flexible ruse for abducting these women, and that his timetable is more important than the ruse."

"Anniversary or somethin'?"

"Probably. Something so important to him that he's prepared to take risks to meet his deadline – and to keep his cycle in-check."

"You mean how often he kills?"

"His compulsion, yes," said Grace. "A year is quite a long interval – and to be keeping to the date so exactly means he's got a lot of self-discipline."

"That's more than we had yesterday," the Sheriff told her.

"Tell me about the other victims."

"Right. The two years when we didn't find a car – Emma-Lou Rothburgh was in town for less than a week. She was hitch-hikin' home from Vegas. Rented a bicycle for the week –"

"Rented?" Grace interrupted. "I thought you said she was hitch-hiking?"

"Hitchin' was a life choice," he said. "She had a little money set aside. She was a writer, workin' on a book on hitch-hikin'. We found her notes in her effects."

"The hotel reported her missing?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "My deputy attended. Estranged from her family, except her baby brother. They spoke about once a week – she'd been on her way to see him for the first time in five years. That was a hard notification."

Grace nodded. They all were, one way or the other.

"We figured she'd attracted the attention of the wrong kind of hitch-hiker and he'd followed her out to a bar. It wasn't until I was lookin' into the date that I thought she might be part of this."

"What about the bike-shop?"

"Went bust about a week later," he explained. "The boss burned all the paperwork, so we had no idea until one of my deputies read her journal when we reopened the investigation. It was impossible to track the bike – we figure someone made off with it, and her backpack. Put out a call for it, but –"

"But somebody had a free bike," Grace finished.

Typical human behaviour. Very few normal, well-balanced people – otherwise honest and hard-working – would be able to resist, even when the going was good.

"We found the bike, the next time," said the sheriff. "She was a local woman, used to deliver mail."

"It was her post bike?"

Hardy inclined his head.

"Found it leaned up against a fence, half-way through her round," he said. "Exactly half of the mail was delivered, too – we had the mail office confirm it."

"So, we know he's stalking them, then," Grace said. "Patient and organised. Able to stick to a detailed plan – probably plans everything in minute detail."

"Again, there was no forensic evidence. Ever her helmet was hangin' on the handlebars."

"Which rules out a blitz attack, at least initially."

"Suzanne Beckerman, thirty-five, divorced, no children," he scratched the end of his nose. "The bicycle got me thinkin', so I checked the years before the first abduction."

"And?" Grace asked, intrigued.

"Irene Castro," he told her. "Vanished on the 17th of July, 1997. Twenty-nine year old bank teller, two young children – oldest was only three. Lived with her parents – they reported her missin' when she didn't come home from work. We've got CCTV of her leavin' the bank at the end of her shift."

"Bike again?"

"On foot," said Sheriff Hardy, and Grace's ears pricked up.

"And you're sure she's the first?"

"Absolutely. I went back ten years," he said.

"And he took her on foot," Grace repeated.

"You think that's important?"

"Maybe, if Irene was his first. We need to look for a potential stressor around that summer, or a little while before. Maybe he took her on impulse."

They got out of the car and Grace immediately wished they hadn't. The heat was almost a living thing, closing in around her like a vice and refusing to budge. It was dry heat, quite unlike the sticky swelter of New Orleans that she had experienced a couple of months before, or even the hot, humid conditions of Virginia. Grace shifted uncomfortably in her regulation suit.

"Bit warmer here, huh?" Hardy asked, with a grin.

"How on Earth did you survive a British winter?" she asked.

He laughed.

"Don't remind me."


	6. Tricky Ricky

**Essential Listening: Lose Your Mind, Kodaline**

**0o0**

Grace leaned against the front desk as a deputy signed her in, taking the room in.

The Overton Sheriff's Office was a small affair – the kind of place that a city cop might think of as 'provincial'. In many ways it looked more like a busy office than a centre of law-enforcement, but Grace wasn't fooled. She had a shrewd suspicion that anyone who'd worked with Sheriff Hardy for any length of time knew their job inside and out.

She glanced up at the deputy as she registered her badge number: the woman was petite, contained and efficient. A city cop might underestimate her, too, but only for as long as she wanted them to. Grace had seen the way the woman's grey eyes had looked her over, calmly assessing this intruder from Virginia. She got the impression that the deputy didn't miss much.

"Here you go, hun'," she said, handing her badge back.

"This is Deputy Cole," Sheriff Hardy said, nodding at the diminutive deputy. "Judy, this is Special Supervisory Agent Grace Pearce –"

"All the way from London," Cole said, shaking Grace's hand.

"Via Quantico," said Hardy.

Cole shot him the kind of look that Grace suspected had frequently crossed her face in the presence of her old guv' – somewhere between amusement and sheer exasperation. She watched their faces carefully: this was the tail-end of an argument – she'd been party to enough back home to recognise the signs. She was pretty sure that this one had been about her.

Cole recovered quickly. You didn't argue in front of guests, that was the rule.

"Welcome to Overton," she said, with a wry sort of smile.

"Thank you."

"Judy here was one of the relief deputies the County sent over when we re-opened the case," said Sheriff Hardy, leading them into the office proper.

"Liked what I saw," said Cole. "Stayed."

Grace nodded. She could see why: around them, the office buzzed with activity. Six of the eight desks looked like they were regularly occupied, the other two acting as a sort of unofficial overflow. A pile of signs and banners were propped precariously in the corner, against the wall, threatening to fall on anyone that ventured too near the coffee machine.

The whole place had a sort of lived-in feel, as though the officers in Overton spent much of their down-time here, too. At one of the desks, a grisly looking traffic officer was sharing a late lunch with a cheerfully plump woman – his wife, Grace guessed.

"That's Joe. Sally brings his lunch every day – keeps an eye on the rest of us until he gets in," said the sheriff. "Give me a minute and I'll find out where Barney's got to."

He hurried out of a door by the coffee machine. The pile of signs wobbled dangerously.

"It ain't up to FBI standards," said Deputy Cole, a little defensively. "But it works for us."

"I think it's brilliant," said Grace, looking around in approval. She didn't miss the look of surprise on Cole's face as she turned away. "Happy coppers work harder." She nodded at the pile of signs. "Summer fete?" she asked.

"Carnival," said Deputy Cole, glancing in their direction. "I keep meaning to clear them up –"

"But they're a bugger to store," Grace guessed. "We kept ours behind the filing cabinets," she added, and Deputy Cole chuckled.

She seemed to be reassessing her, as Grace had hoped. She appeared to be about to say something, but stopped when the sheriff came back, followed by a veritable bear of a man. He was so tall that he had to stoop to get through the door.

"Alright, Grace, this is Deputy Barney Westbrook, been with us most of his adult life –"

"Ma'am," Barney tipped his hat at her; Grace grinned.

"He and Judy have been workin' on the case with me." He nodded at them briskly, hands on his hips. "Well," he said, and led them into an empty interrogation room. The walls were covered in photographs, ID cards, maps… someone had pinned a cobweb of strings between the victims' details and the large map that took up much of the far wall. One colour for each missing woman.

Grace gave a low whistle.

They had already begun to clear an area for this year's victim in the corner, as if they felt – consciously or otherwise – that the predicted abduction was a certainty. By this point, Grace supposed, it more or less was.

They would have to see about that.

She was conscious of Sheriff Hardy and his deputies watching her as she studied the walls. She stepped closer to the map, mindful of the pins. She traced the line of North Moapa Valley Boulevard, almost cutting the town in half. It travelled north towards the I-15, through another small town called Logandale; somewhere along the way someone had designated it as the '169'.

There were five pins along it, one for each abandoned car.

"What's this pin without a string?" she asked, tapping it with her finger.

"Marks the place Tricky Ricky says he found Melissa Landry's car," Deputy Westbrook rumbled.

"Tricky Ricky?"

"Richard Holmes," Hardy explained. "The kid who stole her car."

"The local troublemaker," Grace murmured. She ran her eyes over the other locations. "He's got a pretty big comfort zone," she remarked.

_But all in the suburbs,_ she thought, _off the busier streets._

"He?" Deputy Cole asked.

"Most women are abducted by men," said Grace, still staring at the map. "There's a small chance it could be a female UnSub, but I think in this case we're looking for a man." She turned and met the eyes of the woman in the most recent photograph. "Tell me about her."

"Sadie Myers, thirty-five," said Sheriff Hardy. "Found her car a few miles north of Logandale. She'd just got the money together to open a restaurant in town – was organisin' some big event just before."

"Got a girlfriend over in Vegas," Judy added. "We looked at the hate crime angle for a while, but we're pretty sure no one in town knew. Plus, everybody here loved her. It was too close to the other victims to be ruled out."

Grace stood for a moment, looking at Sadie's smiling face and thinking.

The deputies exchanged glances as she absorbed the map and the tangle of string. Sheriff Hardy waved them into silence. The sounds of the office began to filter through the open door; at the back of her mind, Grace heard the floorboards creak as Deputy Westbrook shifted his weight.

"I think I can help you narrow this down a little," she said, at last.

0o0o0o0

It hadn't taken long for the sheriff to round up his people. They were all clustered inside the makeshift incident room, pens poised, looking expectantly at Grace. Even Joe's wife, Sally, had come in, settling herself unobtrusively at the back.

Having so many people so intent on the next words to come out of her mouth was still a little unsettling, even after the countless briefings she'd delivered in the past. At least when she was with the rest of the team they took it in turns to be the centre of attention.

Feeling every single one of the eighteen eyeballs peering intently at her, Grace cleared her throat.

"Okay, the UnSub we're looking for is male, Caucasian and in his late forties or early fifties."

"Pardon me, ma'am," Joe the traffic officer interrupted, tapping his pen against his notebook in a manner reminiscent of Agent Hotchner. "But how in the hell do you know that?"

Grace smiled.

"All our victims are female, Caucasian and between the ages of twenty-seven and forty-seven," she explained, waving at the photographs on the wall. "The level of planning involved in the abduction suggests an organised offender, as well as a degree of maturity. A younger UnSub would have been more impulsive in the earlier abductions – also, if he were younger, his victims would have been older. Nine times out of ten, women are abducted by men, and often of the same ethnic background. That good enough?"

"Good enough," Joe smiled, sitting back, satisfied.

"We know this guy employs a ruse," Grace continued. "There's no evidence of a struggle in or around the vehicles and there's never any witnesses. This tells us several things. One, they're off the road quickly, or someone would notice; two, he plans this all in advance, which means he's patient and meticulous.

"He also believes he's inadequate in some way, which bring us onto three: he's probably on the small side, maybe a little overweight. He may have a slight physical disability or deformity. He's either physically compromised, or he lacks the confidence to carry out a blitz attack.

"Although he can speak to women well enough to get them in his vehicle, he feels intimidated by them. He's not comfortable around them enough to flirt, which probably stems from and exacerbates his sense of inadequacy. It's unlikely that he'll have a successful romantic relationship. He's probably been rejected many times over the years. Right now, he'll be living alone, because he'd need time and space to plan his crimes – they will have taken over much of his life, particularly as we approach the date of the previous abductions.

"The last thing it tells us is that he's got his own, or access to, his own vehicle – probably a van, or another, larger vehicle that you can't easily see into the back of. Given his meticulous nature, it's probably under three years old and well-maintained. Something that wouldn't raise an eyebrow around here.

"We know from Suzanne and Irene's disappearances that he's probably watching them in the days leading up to their abductions – he knew exactly where on their routes home to take them. This tells us something else, too: Irene Castro was probably his first victim, picked on impulse, yet he still waited long enough to make sure he could get her away without any witnesses and the minimum of fuss."

She looked at them.

"That takes a great deal of patience. It also lets us know that the stressor – what set him off – happened around the date of her abduction. Look for anniversaries in your suspects' lives – birthdays, the death of a close relative, loss of a job, that sort of thing. Also check out anyone who had contact with your victims in the weeks leading up to their disappearances."

"He's stalking them," said Barney Westbrook, grimly. "He knows their routines, knows their personal lives."

"Exactly," said Grace. "He gets them to stop, gets them out of the car, or off their bike – Suzanne Beckermann had time to take her helmet off and hang it on the handlebars."

"How do we know that wasn't him?" Cole asked.

"Because he doesn't disturb anything at a scene," said Grace. "If she was wearing the helmet when he took her, I daresay we never would have found it. He's flexible up to a point, but he can't mess with the things he leaves behind. It's part of his signature."

"You mean, like his MO?" someone piped up from the back.

"No," said Grace. "An MO is flexible – it's something an UnSub does that is necessary to carry out the crime. It evolves over time, particularly with someone like our guy, who is very organised and learns from his mistakes. A 'signature' is something he doesn't have to do to commit the crime, but feels compelled to.

"Think of it this way," she said. "There was a bank robber in Michigan in the early nineties who made all his hostages undress, so they would be so embarrassed that they wouldn't look at him and be able to ID him – that's part of his MO, and was pretty effective for a while, until a couple of the security guards got wise and stared him down. Now compare that to the bank robber in Texas a couple of years later, who had his hostages undress and then forced them to mimic sexual positions while he photographed them.

"He didn't need to do that to successfully get away with it, but he felt compelled to do it," Grace explained. "That's the signature. If our guy had taken the cars and driven them away before dumping them, employing forensic countermeasures, it might have been decades before anyone put this together. He left the cars at the side of the road, in plain sight, because he felt compelled to."

"He's taunting us," said Sheriff Hardy. "'Look what I can do'."

"It's more than that," Grace shook her head, "like he's trying to show us that he has complete control over the situation – so much so that he's leaving these little tableaux to find. Lives interrupted. Like something out of another world. It also tells us he's only interested in the women.

"Of course, the fact that there's never any forensic evidence at the scene, coupled with the precise nature of the ruse and abductions suggest that he's pretty smart. He probably has a white collar job, or owns his own business. He has to be able to communicate fairly well, or he'd never get these women to stop."

"I knew Sue," Sally said. "Sorry, Jesse," she said, as everyone turned to look at her. "But she wouldn't have stopped for just anyone. She was sensible – careful."

Grace nodded.

"Which tells us that our UnSub is unassuming and unthreatening," she told them. "Someone you wouldn't look twice at walking down the street." Grace paused. "That and his pre-offence behaviour makes it highly probable that you're looking at a local."

There was a general shifting about as the assembled law-enforcement shared uncomfortable looks.

"We knew he would be, folks," the sheriff sighed. "Too many victims in a small town for someone to be just passin' by."

Barney had been studying the map.

"All the abduction sites," he began, thinking out loud. "They're all out of the way. Oh, sure – the area around Suzanne Beckermann's mail round and the walk from the bank to Reney Castro's front door are built up, but there's a big row of trees on the edge of the road, there," he got up and pointed to where Suzanne Beckermann's bicycle had been found. "And this cutting," he tapped the map again, "is pretty blind with that dog-leg in the middle. It's right on Irene Castro's route home."

"So we know that our guy has lived in Overton long enough to know where to strike," she agreed. "Probably all his life." She eyed the team as Barney sat back down; this would be hard for them, hunting one of their friends. "You probably know him. You've probably had a drink with him, had him over for a barbecue, visited his business. You will definitely already have interviewed him.

"Go over the old transcripts and look for anything – anything – that might stand out, and bring it to Sheriff Hardy, particularly if the interviewee has a stressor around the 19th of July, 1996 or 1997. Something happened around then to set this guy off, and if we can figure out what it'll lead us straight to him."

A deputy perched on the edge of the table raised his hand. Grace tried very hard not to feel like a teacher when she nodded in his direction.

"Why does he keep the bodies?" he asked. Everyone looked up from their notes, interested.

Grace leaned against the table behind her, thinking.

"Assuming that he does, and he hasn't got some clever way of disposing of them," she began. "It could be remorse if he's burying them. Could be sexual if he's keeping them somewhere accessible, where he can relive the whole thing."

The whole room shuddered as one.

"Probably, though, it feeds his sense of power. He feels inadequate and these are women he has taken complete control of – conquered, even. They're reminders of his triumph."

"They're _trophies_?" Deputy Cole looked disgusted.

"One more thing," said Grace, on the collective grimace. "All the victims were taken between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., which tells us that our UnSub can keep flexible hours. Look at salesmen, deliverymen, that sort of thing. Again, look at people who have their own businesses, who can set their own schedules. It's a bit of a gamble, knowing other people will be out and about during the day, but it's also when his victims will be at their most relaxed, and least likely to be missed."

"Yeah," said Deputy Cole, thoughtfully. "You're more likely to stop and help a guy at the side of the road if it's light."

"And if you think someone will hear you scream," added Sally.

0o0o0o0

"Thanks for seeing us at such short notice, Mr Holmes," said Grace, taking a seat in the back room of the donut shop.

The sticky, sweet smell of the dough had permeated every corner of the place, as had the icing sugar. They were nestled in between stacks of oil cans and syrup. Grace was trying to move as little as physically possible; icing sugar filled the air like smoke, and she wasn't sure if she could stop it from diffusing into the fabric of her suit. She'd left her jacket in the car, but she was reasonably certain that by the end of the interview her trousers would be a shade lighter.

Barney was leaning against the wall by the door, blocking the exit and generally looking like he was holding the entire building up.

"Can't say I'm thrilled about it," said the man in front of her, with a quirk of his mouth. "Time was, I'd tell any cop I came across to go to hell."

"Then I do wonder why you took a job in a donut shop," Grace remarked; Holmes laughed. "Perhaps times change?" she asked.

"They surely do," he said, with a wry grin. He was teasing her, she realised, out of habit. "Call me Rick."

"Well, Rick," she smiled. "I need to ask you a few questions about a car you stole in the summer of 2003."

His expression changed instantly. He sat up straighter, frowned and moistened his lips.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything you can tell me."

"I told Sheriff Hardy everythin'," he said, "showed him where I found it –"

"I know," said Grace. "I read your statement."

"The sheriff said he didn't want to press charges –"

He glanced up at Barney, who stared impassively back. He badly needed this job, Grace decided, and he would probably tell them the truth.

"He told me," she said. "Said he wanted to give you one last chance."

"And I took it, ma'am," Rick assured her. She waved him into silence.

"I'm not here to get you in trouble," she told him. "I need to know everything you can remember about the car, about the scene."

Rick looked mildly dismayed. He took off his donut shop hat, worrying it between his fingers.

"I really did tell the Sheriff everythin'," he insisted. Grace frowned slightly. He had held something back, it was written all over his face – but what? "Even though I wasn't the best behaved of kids," he went on, "I had no love for the Sheriff's Office – but this guy, he's different."

"Different how?" Grace asked. Now they were getting somewhere.

Holmes paused, and Grace guessed that he was trying to find the best way to phrase it, that bad feeling he'd had when he'd read about each disappearance in the papers, or overheard his customers talking about it.

"Evil," he said, turning his hat over and over in his hands. "I mean, I broke a few windows, sprayed a few walls –"

"Stole that car," Barney supplied, from the doorway.

"But I never hurt anybody. This guy –" he shook his head, making the icing sugar swirl about his head like a halo. "People are sayin' he won't stop. I heard he's on his ninth victim, how does that get fun?" He looked up at her, deeply troubled. "What if he takes my wife, next?"

"He won't stop," said Grace, capitalising on the man's fear, "unless _we_ stop him."

"But I already –"

"There's a technique we can use," Grace interrupted. "Cognitive Recall."

"Like hypnosis?" he gave her a sharp look. "I don't like the idea of someone bein' inside my head."

"Nor would I," Grace assured him, though she felt this was something of an occupational hazard around her team. "It's simply a means of encouraging your memory."

"No funny business?"

"No funny business. All you have to do is close your eyes."

Rick shot Barney a dubious look, but he closed his eyes nonetheless.

"Now, I want you to think back to when you found the car," Grace instructed. "Were you on foot?"

"Yeah. Dad threw me outta the car because I flunked English Lit again."

"What was the weather like?"

"The weather?"

"Hot? Cold? Rainy?"

"Hot," he said, with absolute certainty. "One of those days it's so hot it feels like it'll strip the paint off your car. Breezy, though. I remember I was getting' real thirsty 'cause of the dust." He frowned. "I'm kinda thirsty now, come to think of it."

"What can you see?"

"Desert. The road. Blue sky." The corner of his mouth quirked up again. "Freedom."

"Anyone on the road?"

"No. Wait – maybe," he frowned. "There was a rusty-ass old truck went past, covered me in sand."

"Can you see the driver?"

"Yeah, old man Markham – real jackass," he chuckled. "Flipped me off as I went past, yellin' somethin' about 'punk kids'."

Grace glanced up at Barney, who shook his head, mouthing the word 'deceased'.

"Anyone else?" Grace asked, turning back to the young man in front of her.

"Someone drivin' off – in the other direction," he told her. "I can see the dust cloud."

"Did they come past you?"

"No," he frowned. "They must-a been parked further up the road and taken off." His frown deepened somewhat. "There's no turn offs for miles."

"Can you see their vehicle?" Grace asked, interested.

"No, just dust," said Rick. "There's somethin' glintin' in it now, as it settles. The car."

"Okay," said Grace, gently steering him forwards, "it's a little later on. You're approaching the car."

"It's silver," he said, straight away. "Well cared for. Door's wide open."

"Can you see anything on the ground around the car? Tire treads, footprints? Anything out of place?"

"No," he said, drawing out the word as he looked around a memory. "The radio's on. Some country station. There's a – there's a smell," he said, suddenly. "I can't put my finger on it."

"What does it remind you of?" Grace asked, leaning forward. This could be important. "The car itself? Food? Chemicals?"

She had a possible method of control in mind – chloroform, but Rick disagreed.

"No, it's sweet," he said, "like honey, or hot sugar maybe. It's pretty strong."

"In the car, or outside?"

"Outside."

"Take another look around before you get in," Grace advised.

Holmes nodded.

"There's no-one around," he said. "You can see almost the whole of the valley from here, and it's empty until you get to Logandale." He frowned. "Hey, there's somethin' on the ground," he said, surprised. "Bright white – flowers! Just a couple of them, on a dark green stem on the ground."

"Near the car?"

"A couple metres away," he said. "Stem's bent – broken, even."

"Tell me about the leaves."

"Dark green," he said promptly.

"Oval?"

"Yeah, but sorta narrow."

"Are there any in the car?"

Deputy Westbrook was making notes, unobtrusively.

"No," he said. "I don't think so. The smell's not as strong, and I can only see empty fast food wrappers, and a backpack."

Grace nodded, thinking for a moment.

"What did you do with the backpack?" Deputy Westbrook asked.

"I burnt it," Rick said, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"All of it?"

"I –" he opened his eyes, looking guilty.

"I kept the SD card out of her camera," he admitted, his voice quiet. "And her journal."

"Why?" Grace asked.

Barney had moved almost imperceptibly closer.

"I –" he looked up at her, sadly. "I drove it around for a while – the car – and it didn't mean a thing to me, but when I came to burn it… It was like it suddenly hit me that whosever's car it was probably wasn't comin' back." He twisted his hat. "I couldn't just burn it. I thought maybe someone would come lookin' for her."

"Someone did," Grace pointed out.

"_We_ did," said Barney, beginning to loom; Grace stopped him with a small wave of her hand beneath the table.

"I know, I should-a given them to Sheriff Hardy, but –" he met Deputy Westbrook's stern gaze almost apologetically. "I was stupid. Scared." He looked back at Grace. "I never told Jen – my wife. I told her about the car, after the Sheriff interviewed me. I just keep thinkin' – she was a person, you know?"

Deputy Westbrook rolled his eyes; Grace forced herself not to. She knew the feeling.

"You could-a come in and told us," Westbrook observed, sounding annoyed. "Why didn't you?"

"Shame," Grace guessed, when Rick stayed silent. He nodded, looking wretched. "We could do with seeing them now, if you don't mind?"

Rick nodded, swallowing hard. Probably thinking long and hard about the words 'obstructing justice'.

"Did you look at the pictures?"

"No, ma'am," he said, and Grace believed him. "I didn't read the journal, either. It didn't feel right."

Barney shook his head.

Moral judgements aside, she felt for the kid. He'd grown up.

"They at your house?" Deputy Westbrook asked.

Rick nodded, "In a box, on top of the closet."

"Deputy Westbrook will go with you to pick them up," said Grace; Barney nodded.

She laid a hand on his arm while Holmes took off his apron and retrieved his wallet from his locker.

"Don't be too hard on him. He's a tool," she added, on his look of incredulity, "but he's learned his lesson."

"Could-a learned years ago," Barney grumbled, but he held the door for the man, all the same. "You know the way back?"

Grace nodded – she wanted to get a feel for the little town anyway, and she'd always felt the best way to do that was on foot. Another hangover from her days on the beat, she supposed.

Tricky Ricky paused as Barney escorted him across the car park towards the SUV.

"Those flowers, do you know what they were?" he asked. He gave her an uneasy smile. "It smelled so sweet – I can't believe I didn't remember it. I thought I might get some for Jen, for when the baby comes."

The ghost of a smile flickered across Grace's face. She managed not to grimace, but only just.

"Jasmine," she told him. "I'm pretty sure it was jasmine."


	7. Moapa Valley

**Essential Listening – Ordinary World, Duran Duran**

**0o0**

Grace walked slowly along one of the side streets of Overton, watching the cars go by.

She wondered whether there would be anything useful in Melissa Landry's purloined effects. She rather doubted it, given the lack of any obvious pre-offence behaviour on the effects of the other women.

She sucked her teeth, annoyed, making a small whistling noise. This UnSub was a grade-A stalker – so good that nine women hadn't seen him coming.

Still, it might give Rick Holmes a bit of closure. The car and the journal seemed to have been on his mind. Better for everyone if he could put this last part of his mis-spent youth behind him (not to mention a constant reminder of his father's rage) before he had kids of his own to raise.

_Flowers, for when the baby comes._

Grace brushed the painful thought away and memorised the number plate of a passing van. '_Don's Farm Fresh Foods_' rattled on down the street, exhaust coughing alarmingly.

She nodded to a man leaning on his spade in his front yard, amazed that anyone could think of digging in this blistering heat. She stopped to pass the time of day with him, gratefully slipping into the shade of an enormous palm tree.

He already knew she was FBI, which in such a small community wasn't all that surprising. The man told her that his wife wouldn't even pick the kids up from school anymore. Grace wished him luck with his garden and moved on, crossing the street to take down the number of a likely looking minivan.

There did seem to be fewer women about than she might expect, she realised. There were teenagers, young kids, older women and plenty of men – but very few women of the age the UnSub usually targeted.

It looked like the citizens of Overton and Logandale had worked out his victimology all by themselves.

She peered through the window of a bustling restaurant, debating whether to grab something to eat and earwig on the general population. The woman behind the counter in _Sugar's_ lifted a hand in greeting, which she returned, doing a creditable impression of reading the notices in the window before departing.

Eavesdropping would be better suited to the local officers, she decided.

That was the problem with being part of a mobile, advisory kind of unit – it was impossible to have an ear to the ground. Information tended to come in second-hand and – though she trusted Sheriff Hardy and his people – it was always best to hear things from the horse's mouth, as it were. If someone was sitting right in front of you, you could read body language, pick out tone, press for more information.

It was just another thing she would have to get used to in her new role.

Getting used to things had become something of a full-time job in the past few months.

She turned the corner, into North Moapa Boulevard, and decided to mooch around the market across from the Sheriff's Office for a few minutes while she checked in with Hotch. The rest of the team would have had time to get set up in Utah, by now, and it was too early to expect any of them to be thinking about sleeping.

The market was bustling, which Grace thought was odd, so late in the day. She speculated that it must get busier as the heat of the day faded. There were the usual assortment of fruit and veg' stalls, a refrigerated meat and fish van (Grace took down his number plate, just in case) and a stall selling erratically tie-dyed shirts. She ducked under an awning to soak up some of the shade and surveyed the faces of the crowd, all wandering this way and that in a form of human Brownian Motion.

It reminded her of home. She smiled slightly. Flipping open her phone, she punched in Hotch's number, trying not to feel too resentful of his monitoring.

"Hotchner."

"Hey boss, just checking in," she said, watching a group of men unloading a small car.

_Surely,_ she thought, _there was no way all of that stuff had fit in there._

"Status report?" he asked, unusually terse.

Grace winced, that was probably her fault, too.

"Definitely a serial –" she hesitated before saying, "– abductor. Probably kills them. I think it's more of a rage thing than about sex, but we'd need to find a body to be sure."

"Sophisticated?"

"Enough for him to stalk and abduct nine women without drawing attention to himself," she remarked, adding mentally: _Except for a teenage ne'er-do-well that no one listens to anyway. And he only saw a cloud of dust._

_And a flower, _she reminded herself.

She realised that Hotch had asked her a question and chided herself for letting her mind wander.

"Do you need another pair of hands?" he repeated.

Grace thought about it. There was a good chance another woman would go missing in the next few days.

"Can you spare anyone?"

Hotch hesitated and Grace made her mind up.

"I'll be okay," she said. "We're grave hunting tomorrow and that might give us an edge, if we find anything."

It was also something the team probably shouldn't be involved in – she was, in some ways, much better off while they were in Utah.

"I take it Utah's a barrel of laughs," she observed, anticipating his answer.

"Not quite the phrase I'd use."

_Now, is the jasmine specific to the crime scene, or could it have been another flower?_

"There's no way we'll be out of here in the next couple of days," Hotch was saying, but Grace wasn't really listening anymore.

"Do you mind if I call Garcia if I need to pick her brain?" she asked.

"That's fine – but remember she's working another case at the same time."

_Does jasmine even grow out here?_

"Righty-ho," she said aloud.

"I'll expect a call tomorrow."

"Yes," said Grace, resisting the urge to add 'Dad'. "It might be a late one, though. I don't know what the signal will be like on the hike, and if we do track something down we'll likely be out a while."

There was a pause.

"Pearce – those side-effects you mentioned," he sounded hesitant now; Grace 'Hmmed' to show that she'd heard him. "Be careful," Hotch said. "Don't burn out or anything."

"Okay, boss," she said, surprised.

He hung up, abruptly. Grace put the phone back in her pocket, thoughtfully. By the sounds of it, Agent Hotchner had already begun to forgive her. She was glad – he was a loyal and formidable team leader; perhaps he would come to trust her as much as the Guv' had – if he could get over her more unusual detecting skills.

Grace sighed, missing her old team keenly, Lightfoot more than any of them. During her father's illness and after his death, the Guv' had come to be something of a second parent.

She moved out into the crowd.

There was a small fresh cut flower stall at the end of the row, enjoying the shade cast by the concrete wall beyond the car park. She ran her eyes over the wares on display, pausing at a bucket of freesias, and smiled, faintly. They had always been one of her favourites.

"Lookin' for anythin' in particular?" the attendant asked.

She was young and pretty, fittingly fresh-faced amongst her blooms.

"Something for the family I'm staying with," she said, running her fingers along the line of ferns. "Something cheery."

"Awesome," the woman said, already selecting flowers with a calculating eye. "You in town long?"

"That depends," said Grace, watching her collecting gerberas together. "Some jobs take longer than others."

The girl nodded, wrapping a bundle of bright blooms.

"Life's like that," she said.

"Do you live in town?" Grace asked her.

"Nah, I live over in Mesquite, but I work all the markets around here."

"Nice place to be?"

"It ain't Vegas," she laughed, "but I like it better that way."

Grace laughed with her.

"By the way, you wouldn't happen to have any jasmine, would you?"

The woman smacked her lips, thinking.

"Don't think so – doesn't keep well on a stall, sorry."

"Does it grow well around here?"

"Not outside a hothouse," she told her, as Grace handed over the money. "It's hot enough out here, but too dry."

"Cool," said Grace. "Thanks."

"You have a nice day, now," the girl called as she turned away.

Grace rolled her eyes.

America. The land of nice days.

0o0o0o0

The bunch of flowers had been given pride of place on the kitchen table and Lois Hardy kept glancing at them appreciatively. Grace, sleepy and shy with that, applied herself to her pancakes.

Of all the differences in culture and cuisine between America and the UK, being allowed to eat pancakes (a dish hitherto associated with an annual religious festival) for breakfast was one she felt would take the least adjustment. She wondered why she'd never thought to do it before.

"Mornin'," Sheriff Hardy said, giving his wife a peck on the cheek and buttoning the collar on his uniform. "Ah – pancakes," he said, dropping into the seat next to his wife. "I love havin' guests."

"Morning," Grace chuckled, as Lois made a mock swatting motion towards the back of her husband's head.

"Well, you two have a long day ahead of you," she told him, with an easy grin. "Can't go treckin' all over Moapa Valley without a hearty breakfast. Where you thinkin' of startin'?"

"The old Kaolin quarry, east of the town."

"Abandoned?" Grace asked, ears pricking up.

"Last twenty years," the sheriff confirmed, between mouthfuls. "Closed down when the owners ran outta money."

"It was a shame," said Lois, cradling her coffee in her hands. "A lotta jobs went all at once. Bit of a shock for the community – more'n a few families moved outta town."

"Hmm," said Grace, thinking about ease of access and ex-employees.

Across the table, Sheriff Hardy chuckled.

"I know that 'hmm'," he said, pointing his fork in her direction. "That's 'Lightfoot' for 'this could be useful information'."

Grace looked up at him in surprise.

"Really?" she asked, self-consciously. She hadn't thought she was that much like her old governor.

"Mmm-hmm," said Sheriff Hardy, with a grin. "Half-way through a briefin' he'd 'hmm' to himself and me and Geoff would look at each other. We knew when somethin' was cookin'"

Grace smiled in recollection.

_Yeah_, she thought. _Something usually was when Charlie Lightfoot was around._

"I was just thinking, if there is something to be found in the old quarry we could narrow the suspect pool down quite a bit," Grace explained. "I mean, probably everyone in the area knows it's a quiet place they're unlikely to be disturbed, but if there's something there it would be as well to check out ex-employees. Disposal sites are often somewhere that the UnSub feels a particular connection to."

"And he wants to feel connected to his victims," the sheriff mused, nodding.

"What about that old trail to the south?" Lois suggested. "Out past Muddy River. It's pretty quiet out that way."

"Could be worth a look," said the Sheriff, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully. "Say, would you pass me the map?"

"Only if you don't get syrup on it," Lois chided. "Honestly."

They spread the map out over the table, moving plates of half-eaten pancakes and glasses of juice out of the way. The Sheriff pointed out a few likely looking spots, his wife occasionally adding her own. By the time they were finished, half the valley was marked out.

"That's a hell of a search area," Grace observed. It was going to be a _long_ day. "I'd like to have a look over here, too," she said, tapping the map.

"Bowman Reservoir?" said the Sheriff, peering at it.

"That's where I'd dump a body, if I lived in Overton," she said, with a shrug. "There'd be less traffic around there than at Honeybee Reservoir, too. Assuming I could get it to stay down – and particularly if I wanted to return to it. There are ways of weighing it down, just below the waterline without too much trouble."

"Why would anyone want to return to a corpse?" Lois asked, appalled.

"Various unsavoury reasons," said Grace, evasively. "But we know he doesn't take trophies, so it's a fair bet he has – er – continuing access to the victims in some form."

"He might just visit the grave site and leave flowers," said the sheriff, on his wife's expression.

"But that's the least offensive of, like, twenty options, right?" she asked, knowing her husband too well.

"Sorry," said Grace. "Not a conversation really suited to the breakfast table."

"That's alright," said Lois, tolerantly. "I asked. Besides, it's not like somethin' _he's_ ever worked out," she added, jerking her head in her husband's direction.

"That's because you're my finest advisor," said Sheriff Hardy, hands up placatingly.

"Nice save," Grace remarked; he winked at her.

"Hmph," said Lois, though Grace could see that he was already forgiven. She checked her watch. "I'd better make you packed lunches before I head out to school," she said, clearing her plate. "You've got a serial killer to catch."

0o0o0o0

They'd set out shortly before 7 a.m., driving between likely looking sites and walking where they couldn't. The terrain was rocky, with a thin dusty sort of soil that was really more sand than anything else. On the rare occasions that they hit the ridge of the valley, the desert stretched out in every direction. It was very easy to contemplate the insignificance of one's existence in a landscape as vast as this. To the south of the valley, where the Muddy River wound towards Lake Mead, there was a sparse, scrubby sort of vegetation.

The river had been well named, Grace had thought when she saw it, particularly after it had passed through all those industrial washes.

The sandy dust, she was quickly discovering, had a way of climbing into boots and inside clothes. Grace would have been surprised if it hadn't taken up permanent residence in her hair by the end of the day. She'd shaken her hair out when they'd stopped for a drink and had left a small sand dune behind her, like a miniature cairn.

Now, at lunchtime, she undid one of her boots, considering Bowman Reservoir, thoughtfully. It was large, with stretches of the same vegetation that could be found at the south of the valley. Technically, this was a different town, but the officers of the Logandale and Overton Sheriff's Office were interchangeable, as far as she could tell.

She emptied her shoe and set to work on the other one.

There _was_ activity here, but not the sort they were after. She had felt eyes on her from the moment they had sat down to eat. She ignored them at first, ascribing the sensation to her surroundings, which were simultaneously incredibly beautiful and incredibly bleak, but she'd known, deep down, that the feeling had nothing to do with the scenery at all.

She'd felt their presence behind her before long, so she made her excuses to the sheriff before turning to look.

There were seven of them, ranging in age from a child of seven or eight to a gentleman in his mid-sixties, wearing old-fashioned hiking gear. They were watching her with that calm curiosity that she'd come to associate with the peacefully dead: surprised that someone could tell that they were there, gratified that someone was paying attention. Pleased to be remembered – to live a while in the minds of the living.

A half-naked man was nudged forward by a woman wearing only her underwear – his partner, Grace decided. He pushed back long, wet hair, tangled here and there with pondweed, and cleared his throat. It made a gravelly sort of noise.

"Ma'am," he said, and his voice came from a long way away.

Grace closed her eyes as a fug of patchouli and sandalwood briefly eclipsed her senses.

_The 1970s,_ she thought, and pulled her notebook out of her pack.

"I can see you," she assured them, and a shiver of excitement passed through the group. They all started talking at once.

"Perhaps you would relay a message to my wife –"

"We didn't think it was so deep –"

"My son, he'd all on his own –"

"It's so cold out here at night – so cold –"

"I was so scared –"

"I want my Mommy!"

"They drove us out here – there were three of them. They tricked us –"

"Tell my mother I'm sorry. Tell her –"

"Alright, alright," Grace held her hands up and the shades fell silent. "Sheriff Hardy and I will do what we can. We're on another case right now, but as soon as we're done with that, we'll do what we can for you, right Sheriff?"

Sheriff Hardy nodded, clearly a little unnerved, but he looked earnestly in the direction Grace was indicating.

"You have my word."

"Okay," she said, chiding herself (as she often did at times like these) that she had never learned to draw.

"I'm going to take down your details – or whatever you remember – and write a description of you, but you're going to have to be patient I'm afraid. One at a time."

They let the children go first. A brother and a sister, aged six and ten, who had ridden their bicycles down to the reservoir one spring morning and fallen in. The little girl couldn't remember her name, but _could_ remember that her mother was called Anne-Marie and always smelled of sugar.

Her older brother, Theo, pointed out the place they'd left their bikes and asked her to tell his parents that he was sorry.

The older woman had been raped. She was in her mid-forties; her hands looked like they were used to working and she had a sweet disposition. She had known her attacker and had stared up at him as he strangled her, unable to comprehend why he would ever do such a thing. She gave a thorough description and the man's name while the little girl curled her toes into the sand at Grace's feet. She talked about waiting for her husband to come back from Europe during the war and listening to jazz on the radio.

Above all, she wanted her son to have the chest in the attic with her father's things in it.

Then there were the two men, both a little seedy, in their mid-thirties; they were wearing suits that wouldn't have been out of place in a mob casino in the 1950s. They'd both been murdered and weren't very happy about it. Someone had tricked them into taking a ride out of Vegas and taken them out. Grace could see the gunshot wounds, professionally double-tapped between their eyes.

Once they'd finished lamenting their fate they didn't have much to say for themselves. They just kept repeating their names like a mantra from another time: Jimmy 'The Rat' LaRue, 'Blue' Louis Scott from Parker Street. It was as if they felt they might live again, if only someone would remember their names.

The young seventies couple had driven out from Moapa for a romantic late-night swim, far from their parents' prying eyes – and, sadly for them, everyone else's eyes. They told her, each breaking over one another's story, how the moon had gone behind a cloud and they'd lost their way back to shore.

"It was so goddamn stupid," the woman said. "I was gonna be a doctor."

"Tell my family I'm a dumbass," the young man said. "Just a dumbass."

They all wanted to be remembered to their families – though most of them knew their bodies had long since been found. Some of them had watched Sheriff Hardy's predecessors taking them away.

The gentleman with the 1920s hiking gear had died of exposure. They had been surveying the area with a party of geologists, hungry for more minerals, when he had become separated from the group. He didn't think there would be anyone alive who would remember him, now, but he did ask to be buried back home in Oregon, if it was possible, beside his wife.

Grace made a mark on her sketch of the reservoir where he said what was left of his body was.

She put her notebook away with some reluctance; an action that was again greeted with the same clamour, no less urgent now their messages had been relayed.

Grace understood. They were lonely.

She chatted with them as she and the sheriff finished their sandwiches, relaying questions to her friend about how the town had changed, whose families had moved away.

"Grace, ask 'em if they've come across anymore –" he paused. "Anyone else like them."

The subject was the cause of some discussion involving everybody except the little girl, who had taken quite a liking to the sheriff and was presently playing with his hat, which he had taken off as soon as they were in the shade. It leaped and span just above the ground, as if caught in a very specific whirlwind.

Eventually, the young man with the long hair was nudged forward again.

"There's a dude up on the I-15," he said, pushing his hair out of his face. "Died in a car-wreck – drunk driver ran him off the road. He comes this way from time to time."

"Anyone else?" Grace asked. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the sheriff copying her notes, watching his hat cavort with an air of faint amusement.

"There's a couple of people down by the old railroad tracks," he said. "Must-a died when this place was still the frontier. They ride around in an old wagon, scarin' people. That's all we can think of. Algernon heard tell of a couple of ghosts in an old shack south of here when he was alive, but they're probably long gone by now."

The gentleman in the hiking gear nodded.

"I doubt the shack is still there, and they might not linger if it's gone."

Grace nodded. No one knew why some ghosts lasted longer than others, or why some people became ghosts while others didn't. What she _did_ know was that hauntings were usually tied to a sense of place, be it the place you loved when you were alive, or the place you died.

It was one of the reasons phantoms congregated at historic monuments or castles, and why all seven of these lost souls had found their way to Bowman Reservoir, whether they'd drowned here like the young couple, or died some way out, like the cheery housewife. It was a place of permanence, where they could maintain their own memory and keep one another company.

There was something about water that helped them remain more definite.

"What are you lookin' for?" the older woman asked, eyeing Grace suspiciously.

She told them, with a hesitant glance at the children; they were older than they looked now, anyway, and familiar with the darkness.

The phantoms exchanged some grave looks and all agreed: there was no-one here like that.

They left them by the edge of the water and walked back to the car. Neither spoke much as they drove away. Their visitors by the lake had given them a lot to think about.

0o0o0o0

Grace's feet hurt.

They had been walking, now, for close on twelve hours, lunch and the odd break notwithstanding. They had hiked and driven across what certainly felt like the entirety of Clark County, when in reality it had only been most of the Moapa Valley.

The aches, which had seemed almost gratifying reminders of their exertion at first, had matured – as Grace had known they would – into one single, undulating wave of pain. There was a pressure building through her calves and thighs, reaching right up into her back and sides as the day wore on. At some point in the last couple of miles, her knee had started clicking in an ominous sort of way, a constant (and now sharply painful) reminder of why it was never a good idea to go ice-skating as a team-building exercise.

Her hands were throbbing from the constant downward movement of fluid as she swung her arms and her fingers felt thick and clumsy.

Even her jaw hurt, though she couldn't think for a moment why that part of her skeleton should be connected with walking.

The sheriff, who all day had made a cheerful and pleasant companion despite their grim task, had fallen silent as the afternoon began to turn into evening. Grace suspected that he was similarly exhausted – and similarly frustrated.

Since their encounter at Bowman reservoir, the land and its dead had been curiously silent.

Soon, Grace knew, they would have to give up for the night and head back to the car. She grimaced. Another full day of hiking did not sound like an attractive prospect just now, and every day the likelihood of another woman vanishing grew stronger.

They came to a halt together, pausing at the edge of another small ravine. The land here had a tendency to repeat itself. Grace could well imagine how even an experience hiker could lose their way and find themselves in trouble. She stared out across the rocks and sighed. She was tired and achy, and wanted nothing more at this point than to go back to the sheriff's house and wash some of the dust out of her hair before it turned into cement.

She shared a look with Sheriff Hardy, who looked similarly reluctant to continue. He glanced at his watch.

"Let's go as far as the next ridge," he said, slowly, and Grace guessed that he, too, was thinking about the women of Overton, reluctant to let the next one go without a fight. "We'll start losin' the light soon anyhow."

She gave him a wry grin: he had said exactly the same thing on the crest of each of the last four ridges.

Grace nodded, coercing her uncooperative limbs into one last slog before they could relax.

_After this,_ she thought, _I may never move again._

They followed the contour of the outcrop down to its base, trudging across the cracked earth.

"Looks like there used to be a stream here," Grace observed, tiredly. She followed the line of it, running between two rows of scrubby, dry bushes that must have formed its banks when the rains came.

"Seasonal," Sheriff Hardy grunted, stooping to pick up the skull of some unfortunate wild creature that had come out here hoping to find water.

"Coyote," he decided, and placed it back beneath the bush. Dusting his hands on his trousers, he eyed the next ridge and sighed. "I'm getting' too damn old for this."

They started to climb; this ridge was steeper than they'd encountered for a couple of hours and a few times both lost their footing and slid back a few, heart-stopping feet, using the boulders to steady themselves.

Grace reached the top first, panting from the effort and nursing fresh scratched to her hands and knees. She leaned back against the rock and squinted up at the sky. Distantly, the sun was beginning to think about sinking, the air losing some of its all-encompassing dry heat. Grace was grateful for the respite.

"Doesn't it ever rain here?" she asked, as the sheriff caught his breath.

He laughed and it quickly turned into a cough.

"Not like in England," he chuckled, when he recovered. He took a swig of water from the bottle in his pack. "Runnin' low," he observed, swirling it around. "We really will have to head back soon."

Grace 'hmmed' to herself, surveying the floor of the next valley.

"Night comes so quickly here," she observed, watching the shadows lengthen below her. "You wouldn't believe that –"

She felt it first, this time, as a sudden change in atmospheric pressure. It built around her as though she was to be the centre of a particularly violent storm. The air began to taste electric, charged – not by the heat, but by some unseen force.

Grace screwed up her eyes before closing them as tightly as she could.

"Agent Pearce?"

She waved a hand at him, eyes still shut; the sheriff fell silent and she was glad to be around someone who _understood_ for a change.

Pretending you're 'normal' when you're about the farthest thing from it could get pretty wearing, after all.

She could feel the fear, the anger, so strongly that she could almost taste the emotion.

Eyes still tightly shut, she began to feel her way down the bank; she heard Sheriff Hardy hiss in trepidation as her feet slid and scrambled on the scree. She understood his caution, of course, only a complete lunatic would navigate an outcropping like this blind – but she couldn't take the risk that opening her eyes might flood her senses with the waning sunlight. She couldn't lose this trail, no way.

Even if it had nothing to do with their killer or the women he had taken, something capable of this depth of despair had to be identified. If someone stumbled across it and it had malevolent intent they'd be driven mad at the very least.

She felt her feet sink slightly into the ground and realised she must be following the stream bed. Small scuffling sounds suggested that the sheriff was right behind her.

The pressure in her head was beginning to ease a little, resolving now, as it always did, into a voice. Lots of voices. All talking over one another, like crossed stations on the radio. They were so desperate to be heard – or so oblivious of her presence – that she couldn't make out any of the words. They crashed into and washed over one another like the din of a busy railway platform.

"I know, I know," she mumbled, allowing her feet to direct her. "I can hear you. I'm coming, I know…"

As abruptly as the noise had begun it vanished, leaving Grace with a pit at the bottom of her stomach. She came to a halt as the sheriff, a few feet behind her, swore.

"Tire tracks," he exclaimed, and she heard him move away to investigate.

"Is that what you wanted us to see?" she asked softly, and opened her eyes.

She had to take a quick half-step back to keep herself from falling. Inches from where her nose had been were a pair of enormous eyes, hanging in mid-air like two great, black orbs.

Resisting the urge to turn and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction, Grace stood her ground and cleared her throat.

"Good evening," she began, feeling foolish. She thought if her heart beat any faster it might actually come right out through her ribcage. "I think I may have been looking for you."

Grace and the eyes stared at one another for a few moments; somewhere behind her, the sheriff shouted.

"I'm gonna see if these lead to a road," he called. "Don't fall in anythin', okay?"

Grace nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off the apparition.

With no particular hurry, the eyes began to change: they faded slowly, spreading outwards as though they were stretching. Before long, they were the size of dinner plates, hanging in the air in front of Grace, slightly menacing and very, very sad.

She couldn't have pointed to the moment where one thing ended and the next began, but abruptly the eyes became altogether different and Grace found herself standing in front of the form of a young woman, bloodied and bruised. There were tear tracks on her face.

Grace swore.

"He really did a number on you, didn't he –" she said softly, recognising the woman from her file, "Melissa."

The spectre nodded; she seemed momentarily confused, unaccustomed to hearing her own name.

"Are there others here?"

The ghost of Melissa Landry nodded again and Grace heaved a sigh.

"We'll find them," she promised, unsure whether she was reassuring herself or the shadow of the woman before her.

Landry's face was impassive and Grace stared at her for a moment before realising that she couldn't speak, though she was sure that her voice had been one of the throng. Unnerved, she wondered whether all the women here were like this: voiceless except in unison. Was this how the UnSub made them feel?

"Can you tell me who did this?" Grace asked, and the phantom shook her head. "Can the others?" – another negative. "Did you see him?"

The ghost seemed to waver for a moment, like a heat haze on a hot road; a wave of revulsion washed over her. She swallowed hard, shaking away the sudden dizziness.

"I understand," she said and the nausea subsided. This bastard was going to pay when she got her hands on him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry he's done this. We'll get him."

The pressure built again, rapidly. She screwed up her eyes against the onslaught. The voices of many women – too many women – rushed through her as the ghost opened her swollen, disfigured mouth.

"HE FoRCeD uS TO FOrgET!"

Grace's ears popped. The sound seemed to die away slowly, as though the hills around the valley wanted to keep it for themselves. Shuddering, she had to break from the spectre's awful gaze. Her eyes fell to the desert floor around her feet and she froze.

"_Sheriff!_"


	8. Unquiet Ground

**Some days are sad days. **

**This one is for you, Sir pTerry, without whom I would neither dream so freely, nor write so fiercely.**

**0**

**Essential Listening: Shut Your Eyes, by Snow Patrol**

**0o0**

The grave site was a hive of activity. Deputies were carrying equipment to and fro, forensic experts called in from Las Vegas were directing the small band of law enforcement who were scurrying about the small basin. The weather was glorious that morning, in defiance of their grisly task.

Work had already begun on Melissa Landry's grave, marked the night before, by Grace's footprints and the unobtrusive metal spike she had been keeping in her backpack for that very purpose.

The rocks were tall here, forming a wide basin of tightly packed alluvial soil, baked solid by the unforgiving Nevada sun. Grace thought it might once have held a pool before erosion had opened one side of it to the valley below. Still, it was well-hidden. You couldn't see if from the valley below, or from the road, until you turned into it.

She had walked the perimeter of it first thing, while Sheriff Hardy and his deputies were organising cordons and liaising with the local press.

It was a mark of how badly the community wanted shot of this guy that they'd agreed almost instantly to keep the grave site under wraps until the conclusion of the investigation, or until Sheriff Hardy told them otherwise.

They'd parked their SUVs in the scant shade offered by the rocky outcrop that Grace had scrambled down blind the night before. She and Deputy Cole were leaning against the bonnet of the middle one, co-ordinating the circus.

"- and when the last three excavators make it from Las Vegas we'll make seventeen," Deputy Cole said, diligently checking everyone's names off on her clipboard.

"Have they left yet?" Grace asked, thinking of the throng of voices she had encountered the previous evening.

Deputy Cole checked her watch.

"Nuh-uh, they were in court this mornin'. Why?"

"I was just thinking it might be worth asking them to bring more kit," Grace said, slowly.

"We already got ten," said the deputy, with a frown. "You think there're _more_ out there?"

"You never know," Grace shrugged, noncommittally. "It's always best to be prepared, don't you think?"

Cole nodded and flicked open her phone.

Grace watched the painstaking excavation progress as Deputy Cole arranged extra supplies. The deputy joined her when she was done, leaning back against the SUV, the metal already hot despite the early hour. The two women surveyed their crime scene as experts variously dug, sifted or otherwise inspected the loose soil. They had defined the grave cut now, and it was only a matter of following it down.

She became aware that Deputy Cole was subjecting her to some surreptitious scrutiny. Grace turned to her with a grim smile and the other woman averted her gaze.

"How did you find it?" she asked, after a moment. "Miles and miles of nothin' in every direction and you just walk right to it."

She was watching her out of the corner of her eye, Grace noted. Clearly Sheriff Hardy hadn't shared _all_ of his experiences in London with the rest of the team.

"Er – let's just call it luck, shall we?" Grace said, rubbing her temple. "And in all fairness, we walked pretty much the length of the Moapa Valley yesterday."

_And I'm going to be feeling it for a week,_ she thought, shifting her weight on her aching feet.

"I have a degree in forensic archaeology, too, which doesn't hurt," she added, flashing Deputy Cole a weary grin.

Unsatisfied, but currently too polite to press her further, the deputy fell silent.

Grace was grateful. The combination of sunburn and aching muscles had done little for her ability to sleep, despite her exhaustion – and nor had the image of Melissa Landry's dark, hollow eyes, which she was pretty sure would be scorched into her unconscious mind for quite some time. She had also been fighting the excitement of discovery; progress on the case was keeping her awake this morning.

"You really think there'll be more?" Cole asked again, perturbed.

"I do," said Grace. "Why?"

"Surely we'd have found more missings," the deputy said. "But there weren't any –"

"I don't doubt your thoroughness," Grace said, with a smile. "Just – I don't know. Call it a hunch."

She rubbed her temple again.

She could feel them everywhere here, crowding her thoughts. Many of them were congregating around her, like moths, though she couldn't make out any individuals right now. There were just too many. The resulting cacophony was hard to bear.

They were more animated today, energised by the activity around their resting place. They felt angry and hopeful, but shy too. Grace could feel others, hanging back at the edges of the basin. She could feel their trepidation, disturbed by all the noise in what was usually such a quiet place.

A shout came up from the grave side. Grace followed Deputy Cole over to where Sheriff Hardy was kneeling, gazing grimly downward. The technician was stretched out across the grave, lying flat out on a long, narrow board; beneath her the thick, dry alluvium was giving up its secrets.

"Looks like the pool fills up from time to time," said the technician. "Varying preservation…"

Five years of saturation and drying hadn't done them any favours in terms of evidence: what was left of her skin clung to Melissa Landry's skeleton in yellow strips, exposing the bones underneath.

Grace could feel Deputy Cole and Deputy Westbrook on either side of her, holding themselves very still. She recognised the signs – they were both hoping that with no sudden movements and no misplaced words no one would guess just how freaked out they really were. They were doing their best, but she guessed that they'd never seen a corpse mid-decomposition before. It wasn't ever a pretty sight, but in many ways your first was always your worst. As they went, this one was pretty horrible, particularly as anyone who had studied Landry's picture for long enough, as these two deputies had, could begin to recognise the woman she had been.

"Damn," said Sheriff Hardy, after a while.

Grace looked past him to where Melissa Landry was standing over her own grave, weeping.

_We'll get the bastard_, she thought fiercely, hoping the shadow would hear. _Don't you worry, he'll pay for this._

"Why –" Barney cleared his throat, speaking with some difficulty. "Why are her bones that colour?"

"Minerals in the soil," Grace said, absently; the technician nodded as he crouched down beside her.

"The bone's porous and absorbs the minerals – like staining a fence," she explained. "I once saw one the colour of blood. Turned out he was smack in the middle of an iron deposit."

"Bronze Age oak burials come out the colour of pitch," Grace offered. "And I once saw a photograph of a medieval man, buried in a lead coffin. He was almost perfectly preserved, but quite green." She paused and pointed at Melissa Landry's skull with her pencil. "Ante mortem, do you think?"

The technician squinted at the fractured bone around the eye sockets; the skin there was darker, stained. She nodded, sadly.

"Looks like. The coroner will tell you more," she said, grimly. "I'll recommend full x-rays, just to be sure."

"What's that?" Judy asked, squatting down beside them.

"She was beaten," Grace explained, pointing out the fractures as the technician started clearing soil around the thorax. "Hard enough to break the occipital bone. Both occipital bones. Bastard."

Judy swore.

"Any idea who we're dealin' with yet?" Sheriff Hardy asked.

"Probably female, under sixty," said the technician, still peering into the hole.

"That it?" Barney asked, surprised.

"Let me get the poor woman out first," the tech retorted tersely. "It's not that easy with skeletons."

Grace straightened up as the woman delivered an impromptu lecture on ageing techniques, and met the sheriff's eyes. She knew exactly who was buried at the bottom of that pit and he knew it.

"Got anything to add to your profile?" Judy asked, notepad out and ready.

Grace 'hmmed'.

"A little, mostly speculative though, so it's best kept between us for the moment. The beating suggests rage. I'm not prepared to dismiss a sexual component just yet, but there's definitely some deeper issues at play here." She frowned. "It's more evidence of his inadequacy, so we're likely looking for a smaller man, maybe carrying more weight than he wants. He may feel threatened by these women until he has them entirely in his control. The range of ages and appearance suggests that we're not looking at a surrogate, but… I don't know. I'll know more after the autopsy."

Sheriff Hardy met her eyes again and nodded in the direction of the SUVs.

"Let me know when you're ready to lift her, I'll give you a hand," she said to the technician, who nodded. "I want to see the body position – oh, and take care around the wrists and ankles."

"You think she was tied up?" Judy asked, frowning.

"I'm certain of it," said Grace. "The blitz attack, the inadequacy – even if he is physically strong enough to restrain them he won't want to take the chance they'll get away. Also, she would have fought back."

Deputy Cole nodded, crouching back down by the grave in a business-like sort of way.

"Barney," Sheriff Hardy beckoned. "Go through the files at the station and dig out anything we have on dental records, things like that. No need to contact the next of kin just yet, but –"

"I'll see what I can find," Barney agreed. "I'll call Dr Finch, too. He'll be handling the bodies anyway and he might have some of their details on file."

"Dentist," the sheriff explained as the younger man hurried away. "Also the coroner." He glanced around, checking that they weren't about to be overheard, then fixed Grace with a penetrating stare. "You sure it's Melissa Landry?"

Grace nodded. She'd spent most of the night staring at her image, either the photograph in her file or the image of her phantom, burned on the inside of her eyelids.

The sheriff nodded and bit his lip.

"I'll contact her family tomorrow," he said, "when we've got a bit more."

He dug around in the crates of excavation equipment the forensics team had brought with them and pulled out a handful of makeshift flags. From the looks of them, someone had butchered an old fence, twisting the wires together for strength. Short lengths of orange plastic tape had been attached to the tops.

"I had a quiet word with the head forensics guy from Vegas," he told her.

Grace mentally added, 'about that stuff we don't talk about'.

"He was sceptical, but happy enough to let you have a go at marking some of the other graves."

"I bet those weren't the words he used," Grace remarked with a half-smile.

The man was watching tolerantly from the other side of the basin, arms folded expectantly.

"Not quite," the sheriff admitted. "But I think I persuaded him that it might be quicker."

"Alright," she said, taking the markers. "I'll start with the obvious ones."

She rolled up her sleeves, found a likely looking spot and – conscious that almost every law operative from two towns were watching her – lay down on her front. The basin curved very slightly towards the middle, like a dish. Like a dish too, the surface was cracked like a glaze that was getting a little elderly. One or two rocks protruded, breaking up the ground in various shades of orange and pink. From standing height it all looked more or less level, but from here…

Here and there, little dips and hollows were just about visible. Grace counted five of them, making a mental note of their position. Slowly, she got to her feet, brushing the orange dust off her clothes, not taking her eyes off the set of three dips she'd seen clustered together.

Approaching them – now she knew what she was looking for – she saw that the soil was a little discoloured. It was faint, but it would be enough for the forensics team. She knelt, running the palms of her hands across the tightly packed soil; she could just feel the change in texture, if she was careful, but these were a few years old. Using the end of one of the flags, she traced the outline of the grave cut in the earth, leaving just enough space around the edge so as not to disturb anything. Finally, she planted the marker at the end of it and stepped back, looking for the adjacent dip.

It wasn't that difficult to spot, now she'd got her eye in.

She marked the set of three, noting with grim satisfaction that, although they didn't entirely line up with Melissa Landry's grave, they were on the same general alignment, which meant that whoever had put them here had been aware of her grave at the time.

_Now, is that because he likes order, or because he wants to know exactly where they are?_ she wondered. _Or just because that's how graveyards work?_

The fourth hollow was some feet away and she marked that one too, frowning. This grave, too, conformed to the alignment of the others, but it seemed to be off on its own for some reason. She scratched the surface with her fingernail and rubbed the sediment between her fingers. There was no sign of staining here, either.

"Sheriff," she called. "You're going to want to start on those three," she told him as he joined her, waving a hand at the sad little grouping behind her. "I think they might have gone in at the same time."

Sheriff Hardy paused and thought about this.

"But he only ever takes one –" he stopped and tried to gauge her expression. "Overton's a small place, Agent Pearce, we'd-a noticed three women goin' missin' at once."

Grace nodded.

"So he's got a wider hunting ground than we thought."

Her friend chewed the inside of his cheek, frowning deeply. It gave him the look of an old cowboy, rendered almost statuesque by the heat and the dust.

"There's a lot of 'em here, ain't there?" he said, shortly. "More'n we thought."

Grace nodded sadly, sitting back on her haunches.

"Some might be older," she suggested, "and he's just carrying on a tradition."

"You're clutchin' at straws for my benefit," the sheriff pointed out with a smile. "I appreciate it."

"It's a possibility," she sighed. "I can't see them all clearly."

Sheriff Hardy shifted uncomfortably.

"I keep catchin' glimpses," he admitted. "Outta the corners of my eyes. I think the others are too, or at least they feel it – that weird, prickly, I'm-bein'-watched feelin'. Last night I dreamed about them. They were all just standin' here, around the basin. Just watchin' us – real quiet. Eyes like great, black pie plates."

He looked at Grace, unsettled.

"I could tell you it's the product of an overactive imagination if you'd like," she offered.

"And you see that all the time?"

He shuddered on her nod.

"You get used to it," Grace told him, though it wasn't entirely true.

"Really?"

She grimaced and took a deep breath.

"Oh, I hate this part," she exclaimed aloud and closed her eyes in the manner of someone jumping into a swimming pool.

At once, the feeling of sensory overload was upon her. Everything buzzed and hummed; her ears popped, and then popped again; the salty taste of the desert air intensified for a moment.

Then, as if her mind was protecting itself, everything dulled. She felt like her head really had been thrust underwater: the sounds of the dig site faded until she could only hear the beat of her own heart. The inside of her nose hurt, as if she'd accidentally inhaled chlorinated water.

Their voices snapped into focus with a stubbornness that made her cringe. They were talking over one another again, worried and excited.

"_My kids, my kids –_"

"I look such a mess, what will they think of me?"

"I was just stoppin' at the store –"

"What's candy floss taste of? I can't remember –"

"I miss his smile the most."

"She'll be so worried –"

"It smelled so sweet, like honey in springtime."

"I can't remember, I can't remember!"

"Where – where am I? Why –"

"_Please, please, please don't leave me here._"

She swallowed, focussing on their voices, bright and piercing in her head, and opened her eyes. The colours of the world seemed diminished, as though something had washed them away. The sheriff, looking almost like a shade of himself, gaped at her.

She turned, her limbs feeling heavy and sluggish, like someone had tied weights to her joints. The shadows crowded around her – clearer now, with patches of colour here and there. With purposeful if slow stride, Grace strode towards Melissa Landry's grave.

As she moved, one voice came to the front of her mind, as she'd hoped one might.

"Annie – Annie – I have to get home – I have to get to – Annie – Annie!"

The voice was panicked, fluttering like a startled bird; Grace altered course slightly, slowing until she was sure the voice wouldn't get any louder. She planted a marker.

Starting again, she stepped back a pace, taking care not to walk across the area she suspected the graves occupied.

This time it was an image that caught her mind: ribbons tied to a tree, waving and snapping in a strong breeze. She smelled wet grass and pine needles, and the slight, sulphurous tang of matches. She planted another marker.

She followed the next one's voice a little further out.

"Big, and pink, and fluffy – like a cloud," it said relishing the taste of the words. "And that _crunch_ when you bite it, like it's reminding you that it's real. I can _see_ it. Ross bought me some at the fair, it got stuck in his hair. It smelled like sugar and tasted of – oh why can't I remember?Please, miss, _what's the taste of candyfloss?_"

The last sentence was more of a wail. Grace could sense her despair, growing day by day as she faded away in this acid, lonely place. Losing herself, piece by piece.

She dropped another marker and moved on.

There was no time to dwell on it now. She would remember them properly later, finding a place for their memory to live in her head later, when it was dark and she had the space to think.

0o0o0o0

Grace had run out of flags pretty quickly, to everyone's dismay, and had rooted through her pockets for loose change to drop instead.

Sheriff Hardy watched her. She was sitting as close to the edge of the group as she could get without actively trying to avoid it, shading her eyes from the sun and jiggling her right leg up and down as if it was somehow a necessary act – a prop to maintain her sanity.

They'd stopped for lunch; taking stock of the number of markers Agent Pearce had set out. The team leader from Vegas had taken him to one side after starting to excavate some of the graves and asked if he could hire her out.

He wondered what her boss in the FBI would think of that.

So far, nineteen 'sites of interest' had been marked out. Grace had only stopped because she'd run out of coins and markers, although as soon as she had she'd had to sit in the back of one of the SUVs for a while, clutching her head.

He'd spotted the bloodied tissue she'd shoved in her bag and the slight discolouration around her nostrils.

Sheriff Hardy picked at one of the sandwiches Barney had appeared with on his way back from the Dentist's, watching the young agent from out of the corner of his eye.

Lightfoot had been right about her, he decided: fierce, talented, perhaps a touch too proud, but ultimately devoted to the job. It was incredible, really. He and his team had been working this case for the better part of a decade and Agent Pearce had been in town less than two days. Now they had bodies to work with, and could start to bring some of the families (and the town) a little closure. God knew it was about time.

Agent Pearce leaned against the side of the car, legs dangling over the fender. She was sharing the boot with the first excavation technician (her friends were expected any time now), who was chatting animatedly with his deputies.

If he didn't know better he would have said that Pearce had fallen asleep.

He thought back to when she had done whatever it was she did to get the dead in focus, setting his jaw on edge and making his ears ring, exactly the same way Lightfoot's magic always had. There had been a deeply unsettling moment when she had opened her eyes, seeing things that no one else on site could see, and her irises had been an unmistakeable jet black.

So what if she needed a break?

_Hell_, he thought, glancing at all the short, stubby flags, fluttering in the breeze. _She's earned it._

0o0o0o0

Grace gazed down at the mortal remains of Melissa Landry. She hadn't been a tall woman. The UnSub had buried her lying on her back and she was a little shorter than the technician who was continuing her excavation, stretched out parallel to the body so as not to disturb anything.

Grace was rather impressed with the woman. Her technique was swift but incredibly thorough, even down to the smallest of details. She had instantly commandeered Sally when she had appeared shortly after Barney, carrying flasks full of coffee, and had pressed her into sieving through the spoil for anything useful.

There was another woman with an eye for detail, Grace reflected. Ten minutes in and she had already identified the remains of some kind of plant, mineralised by the soil and the decomposition of the body.

The plant remains had come from around the victim's hands and these, too, were surprisingly well preserved. The UnSub had laid her out like she were at a funeral parlour: hands together as though in prayer. Even what was left of her hair had been neatly arranged. Flowers – probably heather, or another ericaceous shrub, from what Grace had seen – in the victim's clasped hands.

He had tried to make her look pretty.

_Remorse,_ she thought. _But also worship, almost. As if she has ultimately returned to being unattainable and distant after all that rage._

She wondered whether the pattern would repeat itself in the other graves, some of which were presently being opened by the car-load of technicians who had arrived from Las Vegas.

Grace rubbed her forehead. Her eyes hurt – hell, her face hurt – but there was nothing she could do about that now. She had to keep going. Oh, she'd pay for it later, that was for sure, but right now these officers needed her upright and functioning.

Melissa Landry and the other victims had been her constant companions since she had first stepped out of the SUV that morning and she was beginning to feel a little smothered. In an effort to clear her head (and to get a better view of the crime scene) she followed the edge of the basin around until the land began to rise a little. She climbed what might have been described as a path, but was probably more of a dried up stream, coming out onto a bit of a plateau, stretching a little way back into the rock.

The ramshackle remains of a house stood far enough back from the edge to be invisible from below.

"Hmm," said Grace, and turned back to face the grave site, looking for the sheriff. Her heart fell as she scanned the basin: from here it was painfully obvious how many graves there were yet to mark.

She pulled out her phone, glad that the site was within one of those bizarre bubbles of signal that pop up unexpectedly in the wilder places, apparently of their own accord. The sheriff picked up on the first ring and she waved, explaining about the extra burials.

Even from up here, she could see his shoulders sink.

With something approaching semaphore she managed to direct him to the eight new graves, which he dutifully marked before he and Dr Rappaport joined her on the plateau.

"Damn," said the forensic expert, when he'd got his breath back.

"Yeah," said Grace, sadly.

"Twenty-seven," the sheriff counted.

With the graves that had already been marked, the new sites of interest formed a fairly compelling series of threes across the ground below them.

"That bastard must be taking three women at a time," Sheriff Hardy frowned. "I just can't figure out how I coulda missed it."

His voice was as level as ever, but Grace could feel the frustration radiating off the man as he glared down at the basin below.

"I don't think you have," said Grace. "How much contact do you have with law enforcement in the neighbouring towns?"

"Not a whole lot," he admitted, glancing over at her. "Apart from Moapa and the Reservation there ain't a great deal of settlement between here and Mesquite."

Grace nodded, thoughtfully.

"Let me make a call," she said, waving the phone again.

"Sheriff Banks is retirin' this week," he told her. "You won't get anthin' useful outta Moapa Sheriff's Office."

"I don't need to," she said, grinning for the first time that day. "I have a secret weapon."

"Sheriff Hardy, I think we're gonna need to get our hands on a ground penetrating radar unit," said Dr Rappaport, thoughtfully. "A colleague of mine at LVU has one – I think he might be prepared to help us out."

"Whatever you say, Doc – though I don't know the budget'll stretch."

"Trust me sheriff, he won't wanna miss this."

Grace left them discussing the advantages of geophysics and speed dialled Garcia.

"This is Queen Penelope, deep in her tech cave – speak and ye shall receive!"

Grace smiled, immediately feeling a little cheerier.

"Hey Garcia."

"Grace! Oh my God! I thought you'd been lost in the desert!" her phone chided her. "You don't call, you don't write – what's a girl to think?"

"I'm sorry, your highness," Grace said, fighting a grin. "I've been in a bit of a cell phone deadzone. Look, it's turning into a bit of a corpse-fest down here and I need some possible IDs."

"Oh, you came to the right place, hot stuff!"

"I knew I could count on you."

"Hit me!"

"I need any missing women from the towns around Overton in the last ten years. Make it – I don't know – a hundred mile radius."

"I know what I'm doing, but I'll make an exception for you. I half-expected you to ask for it in kilometres!"

"That's the rest of Europe. England's awkward."

"Don't roll your eyes at me, Little Miss Imperial."

Grace chuckled.

"How do you always know?" she asked fondly.

"I am the all-seeing and the all-knowing," said Garcia, without missing a beat. "And I have _way_ too many missing women here."

"Exclude anyone who went missing outside of the 12th and the 26th of July each year."

"Ooh, that narrows it down to –"

"Twenty seven."

There was a pause.

"Corpse-fest is an understatement," Garcia remarked. "You're telling me you have twenty-seven bodies over there?"

"They're all grave cuts at the minute, but I'm pretty sure they're all occupied. So, twenty seven so far," said Grace. "But probably total – at least, if I have anything to say about it."

"Ok-ay," said Garcia, drawing out the word. "This is kinda hinky –" Garcia began, but Grace interrupted.

_Little Miss Imperial, indeed!_

"There are three neighbouring towns with nine women missing from each? Three per year?"

"Stop that," Garcia admonished her.

"Tell me the names of the towns and I promise I'll behave," said Grace, crossing her fingers.

She examined the tumble-down front door of the ruined house as Garcia's hands flew across her keyboard. Wandering as she talked, as she often did while on the phone, Grace was now contemplating sticking her head inside. A gust of wind made the entire structure shudder and she decided against it.

"You should never promise that," Garcia told her. "But since it's you –Moapa and Mesquite are the other two points of the dreaded Nevada Triangle."

"Can you email me the –"

"Already done. What do you take me for?"

"I never doubted you for a moment," said Grace, smoothly. "Can you see that Deputy Judy Cole and Deputy Barney Westbrook get copies, please?"

"Oh honey, I'm all over it!"

Grace wandered along the front of the ruin, moving fallen roof tiles with the toe of her boot.

"How's it going in Utah?" she asked, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun and peering through a broken window. The knackered remains of a tap and a basin suggested that this had once been a kitchen – now it was full of sand and dried up vegetation. The wallpaper, which had once been a deep blue, was faded and peeling. A frayed and dirty net curtain flapped disconsolately in the wind.

"Pretty grim," said Garcia, uncharacteristically pensive. "There was this whole thing with a machete – I don't wanna talk about it…"

Grace paused for a moment, wondering how much she should say to her technical friend. Deciding that the woman was practically omnipotent anyway, she asked: "Is Hotch still pissed at me?"

She practically felt Garcia lean closer to the telephone.

"Oh, he's _super_-grumpy" she assured her. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," said Grace, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Nothing my ass," said Garcia. "I haven't seen the boss-man this steamed up since that thing with Emily."

"I'm innocent, really," said Grace, as Garcia scoffed. "There was a fuck-up with my files from back home – certain mis-adventures were left out of my recruitment portfolio."

"Ooh, you're gonna have to tell me about that!"

"Garcia, I love you – you know I do, but some things are best left in London."

"Aw come on Gracie, you gotta spill-"

"No," and now there was a harder edge to her voice, "I don't."

"Honey, you know I can hack into everything."

"I know you can, and that you probably shouldn't," said Grace, easily. She followed the side of the house, coming upon an old wood store and the remains of a shed. "And I know that there were only four members of my unit capable of using a computer, and of them, Sophie was the only one of us who ever submitted paperwork electronically."

"Where did you work, the middle ages?"

"Near enough," she chuckled, rounding the back of the house.

"I'm not giving up, you know," said Garcia.

Grace ignored her.

"What thing with Emily?" she asked, instead.

"Oh, there was just this thing when she first started," Garcia rambled. "No one really knows who approved her transfer to the team, and it was just after Elle left, and she made a comment to Hotch in the field, and – oh no, Missy," she stopped, mid flow, catching herself. "No juicy gossip for you unless you reciprocate."

"Oh, woe is me," Grace mumbled.

_So, Emily is a bit of a mystery, is she? Interesting._

"Who's Elle?"

There was a pause before Garcia answered, which caught Grace's attention.

"She left for crime-fighting pastures new," she said, after a moment. "About six months ago."

Sensing that this was something of a tender subject – Garcia didn't often stop to consider her words, after all – Grace made a non-committal sound and was about to change the subject when her ears popped painfully.

"Ow," she said, and looked up: the shed was intact.

Grace looked around, only half-listening to Garcia's distant questions; the other woman's voice was crackly and hard to make out through the static.

The whole of the back of the house was painted a fresh, light blue; someone had made a very neat job of it. Wisteria had taken over the far end of it, fat plumes of flowers dripping off the roof and down the wall line. Its scent was everywhere, rendered more powerful by the suddenly still air.

Slowly, carefully, Grace stepped forward. There was a bench against the rocks, where the plateau rose suddenly to become more of a cliff. Between this bench and the house, someone had planted a bright, lush garden, irrigated by a small stream trickling from the rocks. She watched as the flowers wove and ducked in a breeze that she couldn't feel.

There was a book open on the bench, half in and half out of the shade, its pages riffled in the dusky summer light.

Somewhere, in the tiny, faded kitchen perhaps, a woman was singing, loudly and inaccurately along with the radio…

"_Grace!_ Answer me this second or I'll call Hotch and tell him you've fallen down a hole in the desert and can't get out!"

Grace swallowed as the world snapped back into sharp and unforgiving focus.

"That's it, I'm calling him!" Garcia threatened.

"I'm alright Garcia," Grace said, quietly.

Her throat was dry.

"Oh, thank God! Don't scare me like that!"

"Sorry," she said, automatically. Softly, she walked towards the broken remains of the bench.

"What the hell just happened?" Garcia demanded. "Sounded like the whole world went squiggly!"

"I tripped," Grace lied, "then the phone went funny…"

"There was a whole bunch of static," said Garcia, calming down a little. "Like you walked into a small tornado, or something."

"Weird," said Grace. She lifted a broken plank with the toe of her boot. It felt spongy: light with decay.

"I'm telling you, _don't_ scare me like that –"

"Garcia," said Grace, softly. Her friend immediately stopped admonishing her, hearing an altogether different tone in her voice.

"What?"

"Can you GPS my phone?"

"In, like, a nanosecond."

"Could you?"

"All over it, 007. What's the what?"

"There's a knackered old house overlooking my grave site – there might be a connection."

Grace frowned as Garcia deftly manipulated the keys, thousands of miles away in Prince William County, Virginia. There was a slight depression in the ground in front of the bench. It wasn't deep, more like the depression of a frequently formed puddle than anything else. The land around it was packed tight. It wasn't the kind of depression you'd expect to be worn down after years of feet under the bench…

"Okay, I got you."

"Can you find –"

"Previous owners, strange happenings, the who, the where, the what…"

Grace held her breath. This could be the break they needed.

"I have got… nada," Grace could hear the confusion in Garcia's voice. "Absolutely nothing. I can get it on Google Maps, but I've got no land registry details."

Grace swore.

"None at all?"

"Nothing for the whole district," Garcia grumbled. "I got a notice on the local planning council's webpage saying that everything is going to be digitised imminently."

"Going to be?"

"The notice is dated June 2002."

"I had a feeling you were going to say something like that."

"Leave it with me, my feisty little Brit. I will get you the information if I have to march down there, take up the stones of the office and squeeze the blood from them myself. Fear not – I will call you when I have it!"

Grace heard the line go dead and slowly closed her phone. She chewed her lip for a moment, gazing speculatively at the dip beside the bench.

"Hey – Agent Pearce," the sheriff called, from somewhere around the front of the broken down house. "You back here?"

She heard his footfalls approaching and turned to greet him. He took one look at her expression and stopped in his tracks.

"Now, why do I feel like I'm not gonna like the next words to come outta your mouth?"

"Don't be so sure," she said, with a wry smile. "This could be just what we need…"


	9. Paper Trail

**Essential Listening: How to be Dead, by Snow Patrol**

**0o0**

Lois Hardy was still awake when they staggered in, just the other side of 2 a.m. and exhausted from running what had turned into a major grave site. Grace had sloped off to call Hotch while the sheriff threw himself in the shower and Lois made them hot drinks.

She had been hoping to leave her boss a message, but he answered after the first ring.

"Sorry boss, I hope I didn't wake you," she said, instantly. "I was going to leave a message. Things got a little hectic –"

"I wasn't asleep," said Hotch, wearily. Privately, Grace wondered whether he _ever_ slept.

_Perhaps that's his superpower_, she thought, remembering Garcia's assertion that everyone had one, even if they weren't nearly as cool as the tech Goddess herself. Dismissing the idea of Agent Hotchner wearing a Superman outfit, she tried to focus on the conversation.

"Oh," she said, mind cloudy with exhaustion. "Long day in Utah?" she asked. There wasn't much of a time difference between Nevada and Utah, as far as she could remember. As much as you could be in a place as vast as America, the two states were right next door.

"You could say that," someone in the background mumbled.

Gideon, she decided. So most of them are probably awake.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Hotch asked.

"In sad abundance," said Grace, and filled him in on the day's events; mindful that Gideon might not be the only eavesdropper, she left a lot of the specifics out.

There was a pause when she'd finished, which made her nervous.

"We'll be going to Nevada when we're done here," said Hotch, and Grace suspected that this wasn't directed at her. Somewhere in Utah, a whole room full of FBI agents groaned. "I'm sorry we can't come sooner."

"What've you got?" Grace asked, interested.

"An UnSub with a machete picking teenage boys off on their walk back from school."

Grace swore.

"I should be there," she said.

As soon as the words left her mouth the voices of the dead swarmed up around her; in her mind's eye she could see Melissa Landry's hollow, desperate eyes.

She should be right where she was.

"Concentrate on your 'corpse-fest'," said Hotch. She could even hear the quotation marks. "We'll handle Utah."

"Okay boss," she smiled, wondering how long it had taken for him to make Garcia repeat their entire conversation. Somewhere in Utah, she heard a door close.

"Now," said Hotch. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

Grace sighed.

0o0o0o0

By the time she had finished, Jesse was eating his supper and Grace took her turn in the bathroom. Lois was waiting for her when she came out with a steaming bowl of soup and – Grace nearly actually squealed – a mug of proper tea.

She sank gratefully into a kitchen chair and inhaled the tannin fumes as if they were manna from heaven.

"You didn't have to wait up," said Sheriff Hardy, conversationally, on his way past the table. "Not that I'm not grateful for the food."

"He always says that," Lois told her candidly. "But I can't sleep when he's out, and I'm damned if I'm gonna sit up in the dark, waitin' for him to come in."

Grace smiled through a mouthful of soup. These two seemed to have the whole odd hours, happy relationship equation worked out. It was refreshing to meet someone who had.

Lois waited until her husband was in another room before leaning forward.

"Is it true?" she asked. "Did you find those girls?"

"And a few more besides," Grace nodded sadly.

Lois sighed, sitting back.

"And you carry all that around in your head, every day?" she asked, watching Grace's face closely.

Grace shrugged.

"Some days are worse than others," she said, tiredly.

"Can you turn it off?" Lois asked, sounding sympathetic.

"Not entirely," Grace told her. "I can dull it, but if I ignore it for too long I get a migraine." She paused. "To be honest, if I spend too long focussing on them I get a migraine, too, so I might as well try to help them and just get on with it."

"How long is too long?" Lois's eyes narrowed sharply.

Grace screwed up her face.

"How long were we out at the site today?"

"A while," said the sheriff, reappearing noiselessly behind her.

"Oh, well, slightly less time than that," said Grace.

"You make her take it easy tomorrow," Lois ordered. Sheriff Hardy gave a salute and Grace gave them both a wry sort of smile.

"Not much choice," she said, pushing her plate away. "Have to see it through, now."

"I understand your commitment, but if it makes you ill –"

"It's too late now," she chuckled. "It'll hit me in a couple of days either way. Might as well work through until then."

0o0o0o0

"You wanna run that by me again?"

Lois was halfway through washing the dishes while the sheriff and Grace had breakfast, and had paused, one hand on her hip, to stare at her husband.

Grace watched in fascination as a clump of soap suds slid off the plate and onto the linoleum floor.

"There's an old ruin of a house on the ridge above the grave site," the sheriff repeated, waving the bacon on his fork around. "Almost like it's watchin' over 'em."

"Like they're lined up for inspection," said Grace, and then frowned.

Something was bothering her about the pattern of the graves. It had been bothering her all night, filtering into her dreams about lost women with hollow eyes, always just outside her reach.

But there was nothing to suggest a military background in the profile, so…

"Where at?" Lois asked. She and the sheriff had lived in Overton and Logandale their whole lives and if anyone still knew who had once lived and died on that property, it would be them.

"Out past the sub-station north of Logan," he said and his wife pursed her lips. "No, I couldn't think of anyone, either."

"I didn't even know there was a place up there," said Lois slowly.

"That could be useful," said Grace, thoughtfully. "We know the place is important to the UnSub. If he's the right age, any parent would have been at school with you."

"No one I knew back then lived that far out," said Lois confidently.

"Nor I," said the sheriff. "There were a couple of girls who cycled in from the south – their parents were overseers at the quarry. No one from the north end of the town."

"Which either means the profile is miles out," Grace began.

"Or?" the sheriff asked, interested. She hadn't told him everything she had experienced at the ruined house, but he'd worked with Lightfoot long enough to be suspicious.

"Or they were living off-grid for some reason," she said, and told him about the well stocked garden and the fat chickens she had seen the day before.

"You know," said the sheriff, suddenly. "You could be right. I knew there was something bothering me about that house – there were no cables. No electricity."

"There was a tap in the kitchen," Grace recalled. "They must have got water in somehow, and gas. And the radio could have been battery operated."

"Unless they were using wood and coal," said Lois, stripping off her half forgotten globed and joining them at the table. "A lot of folks did back then."

The sheriff nodded.

"And I'd bet there was a spring feeding that old stream – must-a dried up," he said. "Be easy enough to rig a pump of you knew how."

"Who would know how?"

"I reckon someone workin' at the quarry might."

"You're sure this house has somethin' to do with the – what did you call him? The UnSub?" Lois asked.

"Gotta be," said the sheriff. "Parent or grandparent…"

"Or someone who was kind to him as a child," Grace added. "There has to be a connection. Why else would he choose such a specific burial site?"

0o0o0o0

"Morning trouble," said Grace, when she answered Garcia's call. "How's tricks?"

Garcia did not sound her usual chirpy self when she responded, "I'm not trouble, I'm the very antithesis of tr-" she broke off and yawned "-ouble."

"Did you actually go home?" Grace asked, wincing. She waved the phone at Sheriff Hardy, somehow managing to convey that she'd join him in a little while.

"I've been checking and cross-checking and workin' my magic all night," she croaked. "Two missing boys and a slippery UnSub."

"You'll find them," said Grace, fervently hoping that this was true.

"We'd better," said Garcia. "I don't think I could bear it if…" her friend trailed off and Grace grimaced. "I'm afraid I've not got anywhere with your land registry search, and –"

"And you need to focus on the UnSub in Utah, and the two missing children," finished Grace. "Don't worry, I'll just head over there in person."

"I'm sorry," said Garcia, fervently. "Even my magic powers don't stretch that far."

"Worry not, ma chère," Grace said, in an effort to cheer her up. "Even superheroes need to prioritise."

"This would be so much easier if there were two of me," she complained, tinnily.

Grace laughed. The sound seemed oddly out of place, even in the bright morning sunlight.

"I don't think the universe could hold that much awesome," she said and was pleased to detect a smile in Garcia's voice when she responded.

"Oh, you are so right," she said. "I'm'nna hook myself up to a caffeine drip and get this son of a bitch, just you watch me!"

"Damn straight," Grace grinned.

"Promise me you'll call if you need anything."

"Well, if you're busy…"

"Promise, 007, or I'll put something in your medical file that'll prompt an immediate recall."

Grace snorted.

"Just you try it," she joked. "Seriously, though, get someone to bring you some breakfast. Miracles can't be performed on an empty stomach."

"Call me if you need me! Garcia out."

Grace sighed and walked into the air-conditioned Sheriff's Office. It was emptier, this morning, than she had ever seen it. The majority of officers were still helping manage the grave site, while their remaining colleagues liaised with Mesquite and Moapa, or tried to keep up some semblance of routine for the town. She found Sheriff Hardy in the makeshift incident room and gave him an update.

He sighed, too.

"I was worried you were gonna say that," he said, gazing sadly at the pictures lined up along the wall. "July seventeenth," he continued. "If we don't find him soon…"

Both glanced at the empty space on the wall, reserved for the next victim. They were running out of time.

"I'll go and tear through the records at the local land registry," she said. "It might be our best shot at bagging this guy."

"You know where it is?" he asked, turning to her. "It's a forty minute drive."

"Garcia GPSed me," she waved her phone at him. "You got a car I can borrow?"

She followed the sheriff through a heavy set of doors and out into the car park. He pointed.

"There's only that old thing," he said, grimacing at chopper that had seen better days. "But you –"

"Does it have fuel in it?" Grace asked, advancing on the classic bike.

"Can you ride a chopper?"

"I have a Royal Enfield Classic back home," she said, admiring the motorbike. For all the grime on its body, it wasn't in such bad shape – and at least there wasn't any rust. "She's called 'Lily'."

"Of course you do," said the sheriff, who couldn't stop himself laughing. "I'll get you the keys."

"Are you sure no one will mind?" Grace asked, staring at the chopper with a sense of longing that she'd thought she'd outgrown.

"Departmental," the sheriff explained, over his shoulder. "Couple o' the boys take her out to keep her runnin', but we don't really use her anymore."

Grace inspected the bike: the fuel tank was almost full. She ran her fingertips along the metalwork appreciatively.

"What do you say, old girl?" she asked, softly. "One last hurrah? Just a couple of old fashioned girls on the open road, how about it?"

"Give me a call if they give you any trouble," said the sheriff, when he returned with the keys.

Grace held up her ID.

"Magic FBI card," she told him. "I'll be fine."

Sheriff Hardy nodded.

"I'll coordinate here until lunch – me and Barney will take over at the grave site this afternoon. Looks like the canvassing is drawing a blank as it is, might as well focus on the bodies for now."

"Right-o," said Grace, fighting the urge to salute. "With any luck, this shouldn't take too long."

When she turned the key, the old chopper purred.

0o0o0o0

Grace eyed the line of higgledy-piggledy filing cabinets warily, fearing she had spoken too soon. Somehow, she had managed to fool herself on the long, glorious ride over, that the Moapa Valley Land Registry would be in good order, even if none of it had been digitised yet.

One glimpse of the stacks of file boxes, the piles of unfiled papers and the thick layer of cobwebs that covered the entire archive had disabused her of this notion.

The clerk, who had first seemed flabbergasted at her arrival and then mightily impressed with her credentials (and the fact that she was a 'British Agent', which always made her want to introduce herself as 'Pearce, Grace Pearce') was altogether embarrassed about the whole thing.

"My predecessor was a bit lax when it came to filing," he told her apologetically.

"What happened to him?" Grace asked, absently wondering whether he was still in there somewhere.

"Retired to Florida with his wife," said the clerk. "I took over two months ago. I've mostly been getting through the unanswered mail." He scratched the back of his neck. "It was piling up in the fire escape. Most people file direct in Las Vegas these days," he explained, advancing a few feet forward with a broom, twisting the cobwebs into a clump, which resembled a sinister ball of candyfloss. "But there's something in the old legal code that stipulates this place has to exist. I figured, since I have to be here every day anyway, I might as well put it in good order. It's just taking longer than I thought."

"Commendable," Grace murmured, swatting an errant spider away from her face. She wondered what the UnSub was doing while she was fighting her way through a small canyon of dust. Had he already selected his next victim? "Are you going to get it digitised?"

"Eventually," the clerk grimaced. "But I'll have to decipher the filing system first."

"It's just that I'm in rather a hurry," she told him and explained her mission. The young man stared at her, open-mouthed.

"A serial killer?" he asked, breathlessly. "That's – not to sound creepy – but that's the most interesting thing that's happened around here all year!"

Grace looked at him for a moment and decided that it was his age and inexperience talking.

"I imagine it was the most interesting thing that ever happened to his victims, too," she said, pointedly, and he paled.

0o0o0o0

"It's my life! It's now or never! I ain't gonna live for-ev-er! I just wanna live while I'm ali-i-ive!"

Summer punched the air as the chorus went on, singing along with the car radio with enthusiasm, if not accuracy. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat.

It had been weeks since she'd felt this good. Her parents had finally come around to the idea of her moving back home to help out. She knew her father valued his independence, but really, a broken pelvis and two broken arms were a lot to deal with when you single-handedly ran an auto-repair company. Besides, as she'd argued to her mom, it wasn't as if she hadn't spent every waking moment in the shop, from grade school through to when she'd left for college. It meant sacrificing a little of her own freedom for a while, but at least she'd know they weren't over-doing it.

It would be cheaper for all of them, too. With no rent to pay, she could help out with the bills, something she knew had been weighing heavy on her mother's mind. Then, of course, there was her mom's cooking.

She grinned to herself, imagining the culinary wonders that awaited her.

She had got out early that morning, earlier than she'd managed for a while, and mucked out Ginger's stable before taking her out for a couple of hours, riding her hard before the punishing midday sun could rob them both of their greatest pleasure. The new guy in the deli in Moapa had been flirting with her. He'd been pretty cute, too. It was exactly the kind of confidence boost she needed after the last few months.

_Yep_, she thought, _things are definitely startin' to look up around here!_

The song on the radio changed and she laughed, humming along to the first few bars of _Every Day is a Winding Road_.

Something sparkled on the horizon, drawing the eye; Summer frowned. Had she imagined it? She squinted – nope, there it was again, sunlight glinting on – what? On metal?

She turned the radio down a little. The road was empty as far as the eye could see, most people either being at work or school at this time of the day, or avoiding the blistering heat at home. She watched as the glint resolves into a truck, glistening silver in the heat haze.

There was a man standing beside it, waving his arms. Summer glanced at the temperature: 107°. If he didn't get out of the heat soon, he'd be in trouble…

She pulled off the 169 and wound down the window.

"Hey!" she called, recognising him instantly.

He hurried over, clearly grateful that she'd stopped.

"Hey Summer – I sure am glad to see you!"

She eyed his van.

"You got a flat?"

"Nah, the engine cut out," he said. "Keeps spittin' steam at me."

Summer grimaced. She knew a cracked rad' valve when she heard about one.

"Let me take a look," she suggested, and slipped out of the car.

"Oh, would you?" he sounded relieved. She wondered how long the poor guy had been stuck at the side of the road. "Gee, Summer, I'd really appreciate that."

"It's no problem," she said, and waited for him to pop the hood. "I've been doing this with my dad since I could walk…"

"I guess it's a real stroke of luck I ran into you," he said, sticking his head into the cabin. "There –" the hood clicked, and Summer hauled it open. "How is your dad, honey? I heard about the wreck."

"Yeah, he's doing okay, I guess," she said. "Out of the hospital, anyway." She tutted at the engine. "You should stop by and get this tuned up."

"Did they catch the guy?" he asked, from somewhere around the back of the van.

"Not yet."

Summer frowned. The radiator looked fine to her.

"Some people are just so inconsiderate, hittin' someone like that and just takin' off."

"You got that right," said Summer, though those weren't quite the words she'd used when her mom had called her to tell her that Dad had been mown down by a drunk driver on the way back from the seven-eleven. It wasn't what she'd said in the ICU, either, when they'd finally let them see him, but some people were more traditional and she had been raised to be polite around them.

"I don't get it," she said, as his boots crunched on the packed earth around the car. "Your rad's fine –"

Her head jerked back as a sweet-smelling cloth was shoved over her nose and mouth.

"What the fuck?" she tried to say, but it was muffled.

She started to struggle, realising too late – far too late – what he was doing. Groggy and losing consciousness fast, she reached into the engine and did the only thing she could think of – pulled the line that led to the oil. It wouldn't hold him up for long, she knew, but when they found her car –

She yanked the cable free, cutting her finger on something sharp in the engine before everything went dark green.


	10. Birthday Presents

**Essential Listening: Here We Go Again, OkGo**

**0o0**

"I'll be right there," said Grace, after she'd stopped swearing. The clerk was staring at her, eyes wide and mouth agape. "Yeah. No, I'm not far. Give me twenty minutes."

She hung up and turned, grim-faced, to face the clerk. She opened her mouth to speak, but he got there first.

"Go. I'll keep looking," he assured her. "I'll call you – leave me your cell number."

Grace pulled out her card and scribbled the number of the Overton Sheriff's Office on the back.

"In case I don't have signal," she explained. "I need anything you can get me on the house – titles, deeds, whatever."

The clerk nodded, pulling the next stack of files towards him and rifling through them with practised speed.

Grace hurried out, hoping he'd be able to find the information they needed before it was too late. Given that they'd only managed to penetrate the top layer in the last few hours, taking the records back to 1990, she rather doubted it, but she couldn't afford to linger.

She pulled the borrowed helmet on and knocked the kick stand off, revving the bike up.

"Come on, old girl," she muttered, feeling the old, familiar beat start up in the back of her mind. "We've got a crime scene to find."

The chopper seemed to sense the urgency of the situation and roared out of the car park, blowing the remaining cobwebs out of Grace's head. They flew up the I-15 at a speed that (if she had bothered to check) she would have been slightly embarrassed about, and arrived at the edge of the tape line with five minutes to spare.

Joe, the resident Traffic Cop who had called it in, was still unrolling the tape. He gave her a look that suggested he knew exactly how fast she'd been going and left her in no doubt that in other circumstances, he would be writing her a ticket right now.

She gave him an apologetic smile and helped him finish the tape, contriving to look suitably chastened. Job done, Grace moved carefully towards the new crime scene, mindful of her forensic training; Joe watched her closely from the far side of the tape.

The scene matched Sheriff Hardy's description of the previous abductions: a bright red car stood abandoned on the side of the road. The sun was beating down remorselessly on the scene and the tang of hot metal was tart in the air.

She walked slowly around the car, far enough away that she wouldn't disturb any footprints. The door was standing open: she could still hear the radio playing, tuned to some local station. The keys were still in the ignition, glinting in the noonday sun. The remains of what looked like a sandwich lay unwrapped on the passenger seat. There were no flies around it, she noted, which meant that the occupant of the car couldn't have been gone too long. Her handbag lay open in the foot well.

Grace stared at it, feeling the same eeriness that Sheriff Hardy had described. Here was a life left mid-stride, interrupted. It was as if the driver had opened the door and simply evaporated.

She sighed. Hopefully the forensics team would be able to tell them more, but judging from the previous scenes there wouldn't be a whole lot to find. She walked carefully along the edge of the road a way, focussing on the area in front of the car, where someone pulling over might have come to a halt, the UnSub beckoning them in.

In her mind's eye she pictured the missing woman driving down the 169 as she just had, spotting another car and pulling over to – what? Help someone out? Give them a ride?

She walked back to Joe, who was watching her in an imperturbable kind of way.

"Have you run the plates?" she asked.

"Didn't need to," he said. "Her parents live three doors down from me and Sal. Summer Byrne, late twenties. Lives in an apartment in Vegas. Her dad runs the auto-shop, but he's in a wheelchair right now so she's stayin' most weekends to help out. Hit and run about three months back."

Grace swore.

"The kind of woman who would stop to help a fellow motorist?"

"Absolutely. She knows about as much about cars as her dad," he said. "If she knew them, she'd stop."

"Even with everyone being wary this time of year?"

Joe frowned.

"It would have to be someone she trusted."

"Someone local."

They looked up at the lights flashing on the horizon.

"Who called it in?"

"I did…" he chewed his lip for a moment before adding, "It was the damndest thing. I was supposed to head home after my shift ended an hour ago, but I just had this feelin'."

He looked at her.

"You probably think I'm crazy, huh?"

"Not nearly as much as you'd think."

They waited as the first car pulled up and Barney and Judy jumped out, looking distinctly unhappy. While Joe filled them in and they waited for Sheriff Hardy and the techs (who seemed to be the only people obeying the traffic laws in Clark County today), she flicked open her phone.

"What? What is it?"

Grace paused. Garcia sounded worried, and a little bit wired.

"Got a minute?" she asked, eyeing the crime scene technician's well stocked case with some jealousy.

"Sorry hon', I thought you were Emily."

"They hunting right now?"

"Yeah, they're checking, like, four locations."

"I won't keep you, then," said Grace, quickly. She recognised the importance of not tying up lines at a time like this. "Got a name for you – Summer Byrne, B-y-r-n-e."

She gave her the registration.

"Oh God," said Garcia, typing furiously. "New victim?"

"Yeah."

"Oh God."

"She's still alive," Grace assured her.

_For now. He likes to play with his victims._

Shoving aside the image of Melissa Landry's battered remains, she continued, "I need you to cross-check bank transactions against the other victims, see if a pattern emerges that we just couldn't see before. But only if it's safe."

Both women knew that she really meant 'they're'.

"I'll hit you back."

"No more caffeine, okay?"

"Between you, Utah and sugar cravings, coffee is all I got right now. Garcia out!"

Grace frowned at her phone. She didn't like to think of her team striding into the fray without her. Even though she'd not been with them for long, being in a different state when they were on the hunt felt instinctively wrong.

"Hey!" called Judy.

Grace looked up: the deputy sheriff was crouching a couple of feet ahead of Summer Byrne's car.

"I got a tyre track!"

Her heart leapt. Forcing herself to stay where she was lest she compromise anything, she peered over Judy's shoulder. He was getting sloppy.

That insistent beat thumped away at the back of her mind as the forensic technician made her meticulous investigations. It was almost painful.

Grace lurked at the edge of the tape, trying not to look too frustrated. She was aware that the others were prowling around the perimeter now, too, reluctant to contaminate the scene; all of them bursting to get into the car and tear it apart.

As the technician worked, Grace's heartbeat sounded like a clock, each beat ticking away another second of the victim's life.

She turned away, knowing that a thorough forensic examination was hard enough without everyone staring at you. The UnSub had to have a secondary location out here somewhere. A place where he could hurt them as much as he wanted and not be over heard. Somewhere quiet. Undisturbed.

"Pearce?" Sheriff Hardy asked, sidling over.

She shook her head, knowing what he was asking her.

"No, there's no presence here," she said, quietly. "Except tension, and that's just us. It's not definitive, but she's most likely still alive."

_So he can beat the ever-living hell out of her_, she added, mentally.

"Have your colleagues in Moapa or Mesquite reported finding an abandoned vehicle?"

"Not yet," said the sheriff, glumly.

It would only be a matter of time.

"Sheriff," said the crime scene tech, and they both turned. She sounded excited. "You're gonna want to see this."

Together, they moved towards the expert, watching where they trod. The tech rested back on her haunches, holding up sample of darker, sticky sand. There was a small patch of it at her feet, with Judy's tire print running straight through it.

"Engine oil," she said, with an air of quiet triumph. "You'll need to get the lab to confirm it, but…"

"We need that processing as soon as we can get it," said the sheriff.

The technician sealed the sample in a second bag and began the painstaking task of filling out the associated documents.

"Barney, when she's done get this down to the lab," the sheriff instructed. "Break every speed limit between here and Vegas if you have to."

"Can I get a picture of the tire tread?" Grace asked, passing the technician her phone.

"It'll take hours to get that processed," said Deputy Westbrook, doubtfully.

Grace gave him rather a grim smile.

"I think I know a way to bump it up the queue."

"He's slipping," the sheriff remarked.

"No," said Grace, thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure he is. Joe?" she called, over her shoulder. "What did you say Summer's father does?"

"Best mechanic in Clark County," he said. "Until the accident."

"Summer help out in the shop?"

"Since she could walk."

"Then she cottoned on," said Grace. "She saw where this was going and tried to disable his car."

"Or send us a message," said Deputy Cole, a few feet away. "Without the oil that tyre tread wouldn't be nearly so sharp."

"That tells us three things," said Grace, counting them off on her fingers. "One – he knows Summer and she knows him, enough to put her at her ease at a time when people around here know women vanish from the side of the road. Two – we know the hood was up or she couldn't have got to the oil, which tells us he has a sophisticated ruse that he can change to suit his victim."

"And three?"

"Our victim is smart enough and calm enough to try to help herself," said Grace. "If he keeps them for several days – and the injuries to the bodies suggest that he does –then Summer and maybe the other women might keep him occupied long enough for us to find the bastard."

0o0o0o0

Deputy Cole stayed back and let Joe do the talking.

Usually she would have taken control of the situation, but Joe knew this family. He could be the most useful and give them the most comfort right now. At six foot three, he was a solid presence at the best of times, but he was also a neighbour and that helped. It was something the family could cling to until they brought his daughter home.

Or, if they couldn't…

Her mind drifted back to Agent Pearce, patiently pacing out the space between the graves, calmly listening to things that Judy could have sworn did not exist.

She shuddered, glad that she didn't have to live with that. It gave Judy the creeps.

_Imagine not being able to turn it off_, she thought.

Although the young agent hadn't said anything her uncanny ability to locate hidden corpses had made an impression on Deputy Cole. She also had a way of looking past a person sometimes, as thought there was more going on behind them than perhaps they were aware of.

That gave Judy the creeps too.

0o0o0o0

The desert flashed by on either side of Deputy Westbrook's cruiser.

With the lights flashing and the siren going he had full authority to bomb down the highway as fast as the engine could take him.

He'd already decided not to linger at the lab. With one woman already missing and two more from the neighbouring towns expected before sundown, he wanted to be back on his patch, walking his own streets. Doing everything he could to get this creep off those streets and behind bars, where he belonged, and his three most recent victims home with their families. Preferably alive.

Hell, he'd probably leave the engine running while he was at the lab.

He dismissed the thought as soon as it entered his head, knowing full well that he'd stay as long as it took to get the samples to the right people with the chain of evidence in tact, and impress upon them the importance of speed in this case.

He suspected that the pretty young technician who had been working flat out at the crime scenes had phoned ahead to warn them, but it always paid to make sure. Barney smiled slightly at the spark of mischief in her eyes. Her dedication to both the job and the victims had impressed him, and her pixie-ish looks had stayed in his mind all day.

Frowning, he pushed such thoughts to the back of his mind, aware that he ought to be concentrating on the road and the case.

Barney checked his speedometer: Joe would pitch a fit if he saw him.

He just hoped it would be enough.

0o0o0o0

Grace glared at the evidence board as if it had offended her, arms folded.

They were missing something here and she was damned if she knew what it was. It was beginning to drive her up the wall.

Nine women's faces smiled down at her, their phantoms willing her on from the shadows of her mind. She pushed a frustrated hand through her unruly hair and sighed. Until this case was resolved, one way or another, she wouldn't be able to settle.

Sally walked in, a grim expression on her unusually pale face.

"Joe called me at the market," she explained, before Grace could ask. "We've known Summer all her life. I used to watch her when she was little. Can I help?"

Grace nodded, aware that Sally needed to feel like she was doing something useful right now – and that she was a trusted member of the team, even if she wasn't technically employed.

"Your local knowledge could come in handy," she smiled, nodding at the board. "You might see a pattern here I'm missing."

Sally stared fiercely at the walls, willing them to tell her something new.

"Is the sheriff still in his office?" Grace asked, after a moment.

Sally nodded, lips compressed, scanning the map of her town.

"How did he look?"

"Fit to be tied," said Sally. "He was on the phone."

Grace closed her eyes briefly.

"I'll be back," she said, grabbing her notebook on her way out of the door.

If Sheriff Hardy was looking grim then they had another victim. Possibly two. She scribbled hurriedly on a blank page in the notebook as she navigated the desks. Slipping inside his office, she winced as he yelled down the phone as an unfortunate deputy in Moapa. He looked up, glared at her, realised who he was glaring at and beckoned her closer.

Grace held up her notebook, the words, 'Names, locations, car registrations,' scrawled across the page in black ink. The sheriff frowned and took it out of her hands, still shouting at the deputy. Balancing the receiver in the crook of his shoulder he scribbled a couple of names and car registrations, but only one location.

She tapped the word with her pen and he shook his head in frustration.

"Like pullin' teeth," he mouthed.

Grace couldn't stop herself rolling her eyes. She hurried back out of the room, already dialling.

"Utah?" Garcia asked, sounding stressed.

"Nevada, sorry," said Grace, trying not to trip over anything.

"Son of a bitch!" said Garcia, and then apologised profusely, explaining that the rest of the team were out somewhere with no call signal and a machete wielding UnSub.

"That would put anyone on edge," Grace said absently as she made it back to the sanctity of the incident room.

Sally turned, looking about as cheerful as Grace felt.

She flicked the phone on speaker as Garcia said, "I gotta tell you, this two cases at the same time thing is bad for my mojo."

"Got anything?" Grace asked Sally as the other woman stared at her phone. Garcia had that effect on people.

"Not a Goddamn thing," she complained.

"Sounds like you need the many and magical talents of Penelope Garcia, technical analyst extraordinaire –"

"We've got two new victims," said Grace, cutting in on top of her friend. There was no time for pleasantries now; she could feel the drum beat pulsing in her veins, pushing her forward, any way she could go.

"Hit me," said Garcia as Sally sank disconsolately into a chair.

"Veronica Luker, thirty-two. Car abandoned at the corner of Falcon Ridge Parkway and Hardy, Mesquite," said Grace and gave her the car registration. "Brandy Demarest, thirty-nine, GBR-3349. Don't know when or where her car was found."

"They're runnin' around like a bunch o' headless chickens in Moapa," the sheriff explained, coming in. He was still a little red around the collar from shouting. "They're only just puttin' together how many women they lost," he went on, unimpressed. "I feel for 'em, but right now is not the time to freak out."

Grace grunted. He must have had all three women in the truck at the same time.

"I have – oh, baby – Brandy has four kids, Dad skipped out a few years back. She works as a cashier at a store," Garcia told them. "Veronica is a veterinarian – big practice, no family. Looks like she was abused by her uncle as a kid in Oregon. Racked up a string of DUIs, juvee vandalism charges. She cleaned up her act before going out to veterinary college."

"Anything strike you?"

"Not yet, my precious – I need more juice!"

"Uh, excuse me – is this the right place?" a tremulous voice asked from behind Sheriff Hardy. He moved out of the way as everyone turned to stare at the door, surprised.

"What's going on? Who's that?" the phone demanded, from the table.

The clerk's face lit up when he saw Grace.

"I didn't know if you'd still be here," he babbled, his arms full of papers. "But I brought it all over anyhow. I don't know what you need, and I heard on the radio that women are going missing," he said, tripping over his words in the rush to get them out. "And my sister lives in Mesquite, and –"

Sheriff Hardy put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Stop talking," he advised. "Deep breath, tell us what you got."

The clerk did as he was told. A cascade of musty paperwork tumbled out of his arms and onto the table.

"I had to go through practically every filing cabinet, but I traced the deeds for the property you were looking at back two-hundred years," he said, gesturing excitedly at the documents.

Grace picked one of them up. It looked like an application for planning permission, but written in beautiful copperplate.

"Only one family ever lived there – used to be the foreman at the quarry when it opened," the clerk explained. "He passed the job down to his son when he died. Went that way for generations, father to son. They were settlers from Scotland, originally. Some place called Fiffy."

"Fife," said Grace, without looking up.

_Fiffy? Good grief._

"Fife! I thought that didn't sound right."

"Never mind that," said Sally, with the air of a military commander. "What was their name?"

"MacCauley," the clerk announced. His triumphant smile evaporated as Sheriff Hardy and Sally gave each other blank looks.

"MacCauley?" Sheriff Hardy said slowly. "Can't remember anyone of that name."

"Nor I," said Sally, and fixed the clerk with a penetrating gaze. "Are you sure?"

"Positive," he said, and Grace thought it was a good sign that he hadn't taken the question personally. He would do well, she felt.

"Could there have been a daughter who married and changed her name?" Grace suggested.

"That's gotta be it," said the clerk, who clearly hadn't thought of it.

He looked utterly crestfallen and Grace felt for him. An ongoing abduction investigation was one hell of a way to pick up the finer tools of your craft – and unusually public for an archivist.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said to Sheriff Hardy, "there are no records after 1948."

"None at all?"

"No, sir."

"They must have gone off-grid," Grace remarked.

"A lot of people did after the war," said the sheriff. "I remember my mom talkin' about it when I moved in with Lois."

"This just in!" Garcia's voice piped up, a little muffled. Sally extricated the phone from beneath the land registry documents. "Got something back on that tyre tread picture you sent me," she continued. "Good news is, we got the car type – bad news is, every man and his gerbil's got a truck like this in Clark County."

"Ford pickup?" Sheriff Hardy asked.

"You bet ya, disembodied voice."

The sheriff smacked the table with his fist in a rare show of frustration.

"Any of our truck owners male and born in Overton in the mid-forties to fifties?" Grace asked.

"That would be about seventy-four."

"He's only takin' people from this area, right?" said Sally. Grace could feel her excitement – it felt like they were finally getting somewhere, and every step took them closer to recovering Summer, Brandy and Veronica safely. "So he's gotta live in Overton, Moapa or Mesquite," she said. "For his – what did you call it? Comfort zone?"

The clerk was watching all this, tense. He was as involved now as if he'd been a serving member of the Sheriff's Office.

"Forty. You people need a bigger range of car buying choices," muttered Garcia, indistinctly.

"Silver," said Grace, remembering Tricky Ricky's account. "Or white, or goldish –"

"That sorta range, I get ya… twenty-nine."

"No significant relationship," said the sheriff. "That's what you said in the profile."

"Fifteen."

"Owns own business?" asked the sheriff again. He was gripping the back of one of the chairs now, so hard that his knuckles were white.

"Eight."

They fell silent for a moment, each wracking their brains for anything they might have missed. Overton's Sheriff's Office was stretched pretty thin as it was, eight addresses plus probable peripheral sites were too many. They couldn't take the risk that the UnSub would figure out they were onto him and dispose of the women right away.

"Jasmine, for when the baby comes," said Grace, suddenly recalling her conversation at the flower stall two days ago. It felt more like two weeks. "Garcia, did any of our girls visit a florist in the two weeks before their abduction?"

Garcia, used to apparently arcane requested, typed away for a few seconds.

"Uh – wait a sec – yeah, Veronica bought flowers on Monday, Brandy got some for her daughter's thirteenth birthday on Saturday, and – Grace, you are just spooky – Summer sent her mom and dad some at home, yesterday."

"Cross-check with –"

"Truck owners, already on it, 007."

They waited with bated breath.

"One hit, Martin Petersen, fifty-seven, got a flower shop in each of the three towns."

"Martin?" Sally exclaimed. "But he's about the nicest guy you'll ever meet – he's about as threatening as a begonia."

"The kind of guy you'd trust at the side of the road?"

"Absolutely!" said Sally. Then her expression shifted. "Oh."

"Get this, crime fighters of the desert," Garcia announced. "His mom's birthday was July 19th – her maiden name was MacCauley."


	11. Salt and Geranium

**Essential Listening: Drumming Song, Florence and the Machine**

**0o0**

"Sally – get Sheriff Frost in Mesquite out to the flower shop there, and send Joe and Judy to Moapa – call the Sheriff's Office there, too. They'll probably be more use than those jokers, but don't tell 'em I said it. Two weeks before their retirement, no one's on their game. Try not to tread on any toes, mind!"

He ran out of the room, already on the phone to the DA for several high-speed warrants. With any luck they'd be ready by the time they got to the sites.

"Ms Garcia?" Sally asked, as Grace committed the map on the wall to memory.

"Yes, unknown lady person?"

"Sally," Grace mumbled, mentally mapping out routes.

"Sally," Garcia repeated obediently.

"You get me those addresses and I'll get on the radio – Joe taught me."

"I got ya, honeybear – and don't you even think about steppin' out that door until I know you got back-up, 007!"

Grace, whose foot had been hovering over the threshold at that very second, turned and stared at the phone.

"And you say you're not a profiler."

"You're with me," said the sheriff. "We'll be on channel three," he said to Sally, practically running out the door.

Grace grabbed her phone.

"Garcia, call the Sheriff's Office, I need my phone," she barked, before hanging up and haring after the sheriff. He put his hand on her arm as they reached the main door.

"If you can get those girls out alive, then do it," he told her, urgently. "I don't care how you do it, but I would prefer if we didn't have to explain anythin' to the DA."

"The less you have to put in the report, the happier I'll be," Grace assured him, as they hurried towards the car.

She automatically went for the wrong side of the car and had to change direction abruptly. The sheriff had already got the engine going by the time she was in place; they took off with the door still open as Grace flicked the radio to the right channel. They waited at the junction with North Moapa Valley Boulevard, unexpectedly busy with the school rush. Grace drummed fingers against her leg, willing the cars to part; Brandy Demarest's kids would be being escorted home from school by deputies in Moapa, to a horribly empty house.

"Sheriff Hardy?"

"Go ahead, Sal," he said, into the mouthpiece.

Grace wriggled her toes inside her boots impatiently. This was taking too long. They were so close now – and if the women were still alive…

"Ms Garcia has found five addresses," she explained. "A shop in each town, his home address and a warehouse."

The sheriff looked at Grace, who asked where the warehouse was. The line crackled for a few, endless moments after Sheriff Hardy had relayed the question. Sally's voice broke mercifully over the static.

"Out of town a ways," she said, and gave them the address.

The sheriff must have seen the change in Grace's expression because he nodded.

"That one?"

"That one," she agreed. "He'll want privacy."

They were out of the junction and away before she'd even finished her sentence, tearing up the wrong side of the road, the blues and twos warning the startled commuters of Overton out of the way.

"Send Barney to his house and have Paulie meet him there," he barked into the radio, steering with one hand. "Have Garcia –"

"Ms Garcia had to go," Sally interrupted. "Somethin' about Utah."

Grace's heart leapt into her mouth.

"You'll have to do it then, Sal," the sheriff said. "Put a call through to the dig site and get the forensic teams ready to go. Any location we clear they're gonna need to see. Don't let Dr Rappaport give you the run around."

Grace hung onto the dashboard as they whizzed around a corner; Sheriff Hardy was taking a racing line through the town, the roads emptier the further they got from the school. Their progress was still causing a fair amount of vehicular mayhem behind the SUV, like the tail of a comet.

_Utah, _Grace thought, as they ran the lights at a busy intersection on the edge of Logandale. _And a guy with a machete._

There was no point worrying about it now, she reminded herself. There was nothing she could do for her team; she had her own battle to fight.

They shot around another corner, forcing a red pickup to swerve wildly out of the way. In the few days she had known him, Sheriff Hardy hadn't driven over 30mph, but now he was flooring it like a rally car driver.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you," said Grace, shrewdly, as they zoomed along the 169.

"I wanna get to those girls," he said gruffly, focussing on the road.

She gave him a look. Even though he couldn't see it, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

"Just don't tell Joe, okay?"

Grace grinned. The expression was rendered slightly manic by Sheriff Hardy's driving and that old, demon beat in the back of her skull.

This time, they would get him.

0o0o0o0

The SUV pulled up at the side of an anonymous looking metal building amidst a cloud of dust, sirens off. It looked just the same as every other industrial building in Moapa, aluminium walls and few windows.

They ran the last fifty or so metres in the kind of law enforcement crouch that gave you persistent back ache if you kept it up for too long, heads down, firearms drawn and in front of them like shields.

Pausing in a clump of scrubby bushes that were more stick and thorn than leaf, they considered their options. There appeared to be a main door on the front of the building. It was business-like, constituting one of the few expanses of glass on the entire building. Sturdy and difficult to creep up on.

"Locked?" the Sheriff asked, in an undertone.

"Probably," she whispered back. "He won't want spectators."

"Could you get it open without him hearing?"

Grace thought about this for a moment.

"Probably," she repeated, "but I'm not a fan of going through front doors – particularly ones that are see-through."

The sheriff grunted and checked his phone.

"Warrant?" Grace asked, eyes on the building.

"Ten more minutes."

Somewhere in the building, someone screamed. The sound was rendered soft by the metal walls and the distance, but Grace heard it loud and clear. From the way the sheriff froze in place, he had probably heard it too.

"Sheriff Hardy," said Grace, tersely. "I do believe someone is in clear and present danger in that building what we've got no warrant for."

"Due diligence," he nodded. "I'll try my luck in the back and call Sal for some back-up."

Silently, they slunk like shadows around the perimeter of the building. Grace paused beside the glass front door, aware that in the afternoon sunlight she would be quite literally darkening it. While she was eager to catch this slippery UnSub and get the women out of their makeshift prison, she felt an experienced reluctance to present so easy a target to the unknown.

It was a brief pang, but a powerful one; Grace squashed it. She placed the fingers of her free hand against the sun-heated metal and waited for the tell-tale click, hoping it wouldn't be too loud.

The door juddered a little as a magnet at the top and bottom of its frame disengaged.

_It was unlocked Guv' honest_, she thought, and pushed it gently open.

Grateful that the hinges appeared to appreciate the need for stealth, she slipped inside, gun still up, blinking at the sudden darkness within.

Squinting, she surveyed the room with her weapon, moving it in front of her as though it were an extension of her eyes: two doors, one reception desk – unoccupied.

She checked behind the desk first, finding nothing but a swivel chair and a stack of telephone directories. Moving to the door behind the desk, she opened it as furtively as she could, sweeping her already adjusting eyes across the dark room.

Nothing.

The sweet tang of dust, soil and mould lingered in the air. It had been a long time since had Petersen let anyone in this office. He needed it to be separate to preserve its sanctity in his mind. This was his church, and these women's bodies were his communion.

She slipped back into the lobby and quietly nudged the second door, already ajar, fully open. This door _did_ creak – not enough to cause alarm, but enough to set her teeth on edge.

The sound of a man's voice took her stealthily through it. The room beyond was vast. Grace thought it might make up the space of the entire building, except for the little office out front. It was full of shelving units, stacked high with every kind of plant a successful florist might sell alongside his blooms.

The air was cool and slightly bitter; artificial, she realised.

Ahead, the stark, white incandescence of over-bright tube lights illuminated a small circle of shelving. It was darker around the edges – purposefully so. He wanted to be the centre of attention here; he had used the props on hand to set the stage for his little power-play.

Grace took advantage of the shadows, flitting between the sleeping plants to her goal. She could hear the women whimpering now; it spurred her forward. There were two voices there at least, maybe even three.

They were alive.

The sickening crack of wood hitting flesh made her pause. Examining the sudden stillness that followed she used it to pinpoint their tormentor's position. A muffled groan put him approximately twenty feet away, directly beyond a large stand of geraniums. The moan set her jaw; these women had already learned not to cry out if they could help it.

Creeping into place behind the geraniums, she peered through the leaves: Brandy, Summer and Veronica were in a bad way, their hands and feet bound to three concrete columns that supported the roof. Petersen leaned against a fourth column, coiled up like a snake about to strike.

He was swinging a baseball bat between his hands, spatters of blood on his lilac shirt. Their subject was quite a round, inoffensive man. She could well imagine how these women could be taken in; other than the blood, he was immaculately dressed. He was balding and red-faced. Even now, prowling around three women who could neither fight nor talk back, preparing to continue their 'punishment', their blood on his face, he still looked faintly apologetic.

There was no sign of the sheriff, though he could have been in the deeper shadows towards the back of the warehouse; anything outside the circle of light was impossible to see.

Petersen prodded Veronica Luker hard in the stomach, causing fresh tears to coarse down the woman's already bloodied cheek, leaving salt trails behind.

Grace shifted her weight, her jacket brushing against the fragrant leaves. With great force, she felt the cold, grey rage of the professional copper course through her. These women would associate the scent and sight of flowers with this now.

"You'll never be good enough, you filthy little whore," Peterson spat, and Grace understood why she hadn't heard him clearly before.

Even here, where he had total control, nearing the very peak of his rage, he couldn't bring himself to raise his voice above a whisper.

He began to raise his arm high above his head, the pace and vehemence of his muttering increasing. It was now or never. This next swing might be the last for Veronica, and with an uncle like hers she'd already suffered enough.

Grace focussed on a shelving unit at the back of the warehouse, in a direction she hoped the sheriff wasn't in, and twisted. Plants rattled in their pots with startled violence, falling to the floor with a clatter.

Petersen span, shocked, and ran towards the sound, his bludgeon waving wildly, striking shelves along the way and filling the air with showers of soil and bruised leaves.

Satisfied that he was compounding his own fears by making more of a mess, Grace dashed out from her hiding place and made a show of untying Summer Bryne's hands. Her fingers felt clumsy and slow, but she didn't want to use too much obvious magic.

All three women were wide-eyed and completely silent. Grace would have been willing to bet that none of them were breathing, all four of them concentrating on the sounds Petersen was making, trying to gauge when he would be back.

He'd tied his knots well and Grace hissed in frustration; they did not have time to waste. She ran the fingertips over the thick hemp and it unravelled obediently under her hands. She got to work on the cord binding Summer's legs, giving it just enough of a show before using her magic to make it look plausible.

Loose, Summer staggered over to Brandy and started work on her bonds as Grace hurried over to Veronica.

Keeping an ear on the sounds of destruction from the other end of the room, she hissed at Veronica, "It's going to be okay. None of this is your fault," she added, remembering the woman's past. "It's just fucking awful luck."

The woman whimpered in terror as the ropes around her wrists fell to her feet. Grace's heart was hammering against the inside of her ribcage; this was taking too long.

Veronica twisted in the ropes and the women shared an eloquent look. Petersen's sounds of frustration had changed direction – they were getting nearer now. Grace untied Veronica's ankles without bothering to touch them and rose from her crouch with her gun already up. She strafed across the circle of light, keeping Veronica behind her as she stumbled over to help Summer untie Brandy.

It didn't surprise Grace that it was taking them a long time. Petersen's knots were tied with a practiced hand, and these women had been tied tightly for several hours, restricting the movement and blood flow to their hands.

In the darkness, Petersen gave a roar – the loudest vocalisation Grace had heard from him so far; they had been spotted. Behind her, one of the women gave a shrill shriek as their captor rushed into sight, bat raised and mayhem on his round, angry face.

"Put that down!" Grace shouted, gun levelled at Martin Petersen's heart.

She hoped that the women would have the sense to stay behind her – and that Petersen would have the sense not to make her shoot him. Her shout, and more probably her gun, had made him pause mid-step.

"Get out!" he snarled, nostrils flaring. His eyes bulged unpleasantly in their sockets, making him look oddly cartoonish. "You can't be here!"

"I said," Grace responded, in the firm level voice she used on children and drunks, "_put that down_."

Petersen wavered as she hoped he might; his mother had been such a strong influence on his life, after all. The lump of wood went down slightly.

"But they're _mine_!" he whined, almost petulantly. His body tensed and the bat rose again.

Grace narrowed her eyes, flirting with the idea of making a ceiling panel fall on his head. She dismissed it outright. As comfortable as Sheriff Hardy was with magic, no one needed to have to write about it in an official report – especially not one that involved several witnesses.

Besides, she really didn't want to have to talk about it. She wasn't sure Hotch's blood pressure could take it.

"Don't make me shoot you, Mr Petersen," she said, in a stern voice. She took a gamble on the profile: "You don't want that, Mr Petersen, I would have to tell your mother."

Behind her, she heard a coil of rope softly drop to the concrete floor.

"My – my mom?"

Petersen's stare had become a little fixed; the bludgeon lowered again, but only fractionally.

"Do you think she would approve of what you've been doing here? Just look at the mess you've made of your shirt!"

"Of course – of course she would," he stammered. One hand went to the bloodstains on his shirt.

"She would want you to hurt women?"

"Bad girls need to be punished."

His eyes darted back and forth between Grace and the three women cowering behind her.

"Like her daddy punished her?" Grace asked.

Petersen faltered.

"My mother was perfect," he stuttered. "I –"

"I think," said Grace, still in what her colleagues back home had referred to as her 'teacher voice', "that she would be ashamed of you."

"Asha-ashamed of – of me?"

The baseball bat fell another inch. He was in trouble now, and Grace knew that he knew it. If she could keep him talking just a little while longer…

"She would say that you were a disgrace," she continued, mercilessly.

"A disgrace?"

Petersen's voice was increasing in pitch; the weapon was wavering properly now. A little further and Grace would be able to disable him. Movement deep in the shadows caught Grace's eye.

She chose her next words carefully.

"Martin Alexander Petersen," she said in a steely tone, "you have been a very naughty boy!"

"B-b-but Mommy!" Petersen wailed. "It was for you, Mommy! None of them were ever as good as you! None of them!"

He fell to his knees; the baseball bat clattered to the ground.

"Now then, Martin," said the sheriff, emerging from the darkness. "You just come along with me."

He kicked the bludgeon away with his foot.

Petersen was blubbering in earnest now, looking so much like an overgrown schoolboy that Grace was almost surprised he wasn't wearing a sailor suit.

"She's gonna tell my Mommy!" he wailed, hands over his eyes. "She's gonna tell my M-M-Mommy!"

It was, frankly, disgusting.

The sheriff met Grace's eyes for a moment and then put his gun away. He took out his handcuffs.

"I'm sure I can convince Agent Pearce not to tell your mother," he said soothingly, though Grace was sure this was making his skin crawl.

Petersen looked up, pleading. He grabbed the front of Sheriff Hardy's shirt; Grace tensed, shifting her weight to maintain a clear shot, just in case.

"Y-you will? Please, sheriff? I'll – I'll be a good boy –"

"You come with me nice and quiet, and tell me about all the other girls down at the Sheriff's Office, I'll see to it."

He put a steadying hand on the man's shoulder.

"You p-promise?" he snivelled.

The sheriff glanced at Grace.

"If you're a good boy for the sheriff and his deputies," said Grace, meeting Petersen's petrified gaze, "then I promise not to tell your mother."

The UnSub collapsed against the sheriff, who had him handcuffed and hauled to his feet in under a minute.

Sure that he was secure, Grace checked her weapon and radioed for an ambulance. She helped the women stumble out of the warehouse and into the empty office, wanting to get them out of their place of torture (not to mention a crime scene that might convict their captor) as quickly as possible.

She had to support Brandy Demarest, who looked like she had a badly broken leg. From the way they were moving and the hitches in their breathing she suspected that they all had cracked ribs, and maybe internal damage.

"What was wrong with him?" asked Brandy, as she was helped into a chair.

"A great many things," said Grace. "Let's concentrate on you three for now, eh?"

"My babies –"

"The deputies in Moapa are with them," Grace assured her. "They're just fine."

"I've known him all my life," muttered Summer. Now some of the terror was wearing off, shock was setting in. "That _bastard_! Why us? Why us?"

"It ain't our fault, honey," said Veronica, an arm around Summer's shoulder. "It's about him and his demons," she coughed, hard. "Don't go lookin' for a reason, 'cause you won't find one."

Brandy clutched Grace's arm.

"Thank you," she said, fingers gripping the agent so hard it hurt. "Thank you."

0o0o0o0

"Long day," said Sheriff Hardy, settling himself against the cooling bodywork of his department SUV.

Grace nodded mutely. The opening chords of the migraine she was going to have in about a day were just sounding inside her skull. She was hoping that if she could keep completely still for a few minutes, it might buy her a little more time and it might not hit until she landed back in DC. Either way, she knew that by the following evening she would be a complete mess.

"We got him." The sheriff puffed out his cheeks. "Ten years and we got him. Thanks."

"Team effort," Grace shrugged. "And a large portion of good, old-fashioned stubbornness on your part." She shot him a smile. "Nice tactic, by the way."

"Taking a leaf outta yours and Lightfoot's books," he grinned. "Although, jus' between you and me, I would-a preferred to shoot him."

Grace snorted. She didn't believe it for a second.

"Sheriff?"

The exemplary forensic technician from Vegas was bearing down on them and the sheriff sighed. Grace relaxed a little more, happy in the knowledge that they weren't on her manor, and apart from a lengthy report and debriefing, the rest of this case had already drifted firmly into the range of no longer being her problem.

Grace's phone buzzed as they talked. She glanced down to see a text from Garcia, who had had the foresight not to call, just in case.

_Team safe, are you?_

A part of Grace's being that had been buzzing with anxiety abruptly relaxed.

"Hey," she said, when Garcia picked up. "We got him."

She watched Summer Byrne being loaded into the waiting ambulance as Garcia talked, assuring her that the rest of the gang were safe and well, and that if Grace had been hurt she would have marched all the way to Nevada to kill her herself.

Beside her, the Sheriff and the tech paused in their deliberations, watching the sun begin to set with the contentment of coppers who had brought all their victims home safely this time.

"Hotch wants you to call him now for a debrief, okay?" Garcia told her.

"Right-o," she said.

Garcia signed off as the ambulances zoomed away, replaced almost immediately by press vehicles.

"You want to split the team?" the technician asked. "Or focus our efforts here?"

"Here, for now," said Sheriff Hardy. "The evidence is fresher."

Grace nodded.

"Let the dead sleep," she said.

0o0o0o0

"You sure you're okay to fly?" Lois Hardy asked, concerned.

"Trust me, I look a lot worse than I feel," Grace assured her, though this wasn't strictly true. "I'll go to sleep as soon as we're in the air."

This wasn't strictly true, either, given her continued edginess about being airborne, but Lois wasn't to know.

"Hmm," she said, and Grace smiled at her obvious disbelief.

She was saved from further comment by the return of Sheriff Hardy, who had disappeared to answer a call.

"Just finished tellin' your Agent Hotchner what an operational asset you've been," he said, grinning.

"Oh yeah?" Grace's eyebrow raised itself at the Met management buzzwords.

"Yeah," he said. "I told him you were a proactive resource with active operational flexibility. You actioned your time well, showing due diligence and proper media compliance."

He roared with laughter and Grace afforded him a chuckle that hurt her face.

"Not everyone speaks Met," she told him. "Do you think he believed you?"

"I hope so," he said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Over half of it was true!"

Grace giggled.

Lois stared between the pair of them with all the patience accumulated over thirty years of marriage.

"Seriously though, I owe you one."

"Just doing my job," said Grace, in a passable impression of the 'Just the facts, Ma'am' era of FBI agents.

"I'm pretty sure what ever you did at that grave site isn't in your job description," the sheriff observed.

"Semantics," Grace shrugged. "As far as I know, it's not illegal to see ghosts. I'm just 'utilising my assets' in the fullest sense."

This, of course, sent Grace and the sheriff into a fresh fit of laughter.

"I've met second graders with a better grasp of English," said Lois, tutting. "Your service bulletins must be incomprehensible."

"Utterly," Grace admitted. "Thanks for putting me up – and for putting up with me."

Lois snorted and gave her a warm hug.

"Now scoot," said the sheriff, amiably. "Before you miss your flight and get in more trouble."

"Me? In trouble?" she laughed and headed towards the gate. She thought of all those painful months back in London, bouncing between the IPCC and court, and back again. "Heaven forefend."

0o0o0o0

Spencer Reid walked down the brightly lit street, wondering what to eat.

He'd spent the day wrapping up his case notes from Utah and trying not to speculate on what might have happened if they'd got there even ten minutes later. It didn't bear thinking about.

He'd stayed later than the others and gone to one of his meetings. It had been a good one for him; he finally felt like he was beating the Dilaudid. He was even considering leaving the group behind entirely, feeling that other people needed them more than he did right now. He'd decided to run it past Grace when she got back from Nevada.

She'd been such a significant part of his recovery so far, and often seemed to know when he needed support before he did. If he left the group without talking to her about it, it would have felt very strange indeed.

Stranger still, he reflected, that he could be so open with someone he'd only know for a couple of months. But then, Grace had a way of making him feel like things weren't his fault, and that he wasn't alone. He'd asked her about her occasional oblique references to whatever it was that had made her leave London (other than her father's death), but she'd refused to be drawn.

He'd let it go for the moment. She knew he would listen if she ever felt ready to talk…

Spencer paused, frowning.

As if simply thinking about his friend had called her into being, Grace was standing outside the Vietnamese restaurant across the street, gazing at the menu. Pleased, he made a beeline for her.

"Hey," he said, but she didn't seem to have heard him. He frowned and said 'Hi' again, but it wasn't until he touched her arm that she looked up and stared blearily at him.

"Oh, hey," she said thickly, as though thinking was too much like hard work. "Sorry – in my own little world."

"Are you okay?" he asked, looking her up and down. She looked exhausted, like one stiff breeze might knock her down. It was disconcerting given her usually implacable nature.

She nodded, and then grimaced, which wasn't all that convincing, really.

"Bad headache," she said, by way of an explanation. "Need to eat before I crash or tomorrow will be even worse. Know if this place is any good?" she asked, squinting back at the menu. "The words are misbehaving…"

Knowing a migraine when he saw one, Spencer grimaced in sympathy.

"Yeah, it's okay – you want some company?"

"If you don't mind me confused and uncommuni- uncommuniti- uncommunicative," she smiled, and then winced as if the movement had hurt rather a lot. "And can possibly order for me."

He fell into step beside her, wondering just how bad Nevada had been for Grace to be in such a state.

0o0

Spencer watched his friend sleep, perturbed.

They'd stayed at the Vietnamese restaurant until Grace's voice had started to slur, when he'd made the executive decision to pilot her towards his apartment, rather than the cadet quarters.

For one thing, it was far quieter and he got the feeling that a night of undisturbed sleep would do Grace the world of good. For another, he was quite concerned about how pale she was when they'd stepped out onto the street. She had the look of a person who shouldn't be left alone for too long.

She'd fallen asleep on him on the AMTRACK, her head resting against his shoulder. He hadn't known what to do about it, and had tried to stay as still as possible in case waking her up was the wrong thing to do.

The woman opposite them, with her smart suit and briefcase, had given him a knowing smile. He hadn't known quite what to do about that, either.

Okay, they'd slept together in New Orleans, but that had been a one-off. It wasn't as if they were romantically involved. Even the thought made him blush.

Grace hadn't really woken up when they'd left the train, but he'd discovered that she would walk reasonably steadily if he had an arm around her waist. It must have been a hangover from her earlier career, patrolling the streets of London.

It had felt incredibly strange to be that physically close to someone for such a long period. He had become very good at keeping people at arm's length over the years, but it seemed that while Grace understood his boundaries, those rules just didn't apply to her. He had even actively sought out her proximity at times.

It amazed him how warm she was, and how – even after a week in the Nevada desert – she still smelled faintly of bergamot.

Getting his door open had been tricky, but ultimately less impossible than he'd feared. He had kicked it shut with his foot, taken one look at the couch, which still had the blanket he had come to think of as Grace's folded neatly over one arm, and decided that it was his turn to sleep on it. She had spent too many nights on it this month already.

He had deposited her on his bed as gently as he could and tried to ignore the hot surge of memories of the drunken, desperate night when they had tumbled together onto Grace's welcoming hotel bed. He could still remember the way her skin had felt under his fingertips. Sometimes he woke up with the taste of strawberries in his mouth.

He'd managed to get her earrings and necklace off, lest she stabbed or strangled herself in her sleep, and had been working on her boots, wondering how the hell he'd got himself into this ludicrous situation, when Grace had started mumbling.

A few moments of careful observation had confirmed that she was, in fact, talking in her sleep, and he had gone back to removing her footwear.

When she'd started muttering about the screaming, however, he'd started to pay attention. Grace had rambled on for a good five minutes, about things that a normal FBI agent shouldn't believe in, with Spencer hanging on to one of her shoes, his mouth open. It had mostly been about ghosts. Mostly.

She'd even giggled disturbingly at one point, and told someone called Geoff that 'the less Hotch knew about magic, the better'.

The mumbling had subsided, after a while, and he'd succeeded in getting both her boots off. He'd pulled the covers over her, grabbed his pyjamas and made for the living room.

Standing in the doorway, watching her sleep, Spencer felt distinctly uneasy.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was harbouring the very real suspicion that his friend might actually be a little bit nuts.

0o0o0o0

Grace woke up slowly.

Everything felt like it was a long way off, as if someone had muted the world. Then the headache kicked in, like someone flicking on a switch. She curled into a ball, as if this would help. The dense throbbing pain retreated after a minute or so, which was a good sign, and soon she felt capable of opening her eyes. She stretched, grateful that she had slept through the worst of the migraine that had gripped her as she'd flown back to DC.

Her face felt a little tender, but she felt if she could just have a cup of tea –

It occurred to her that this wasn't her bedroom.

Grace sat up, confused, and looked around. It really _wasn't_ her room. For one thing, it was a good deal more pleasant than the cadet house. The bed was a decent size and free of lumps, and the walls weren't that horrible institutional beige that they'd thought had a calming effect in the 1990s. Also, whosever bedroom it was had decorated it in blues and browns, which while aesthetically pleasing, wasn't a combination Grace would have naturally opted for.

She squinted down at herself and realised she was mostly fully clothed. Someone, probably not her, had removed her boots and put them neatly on the floor by the end of the bed. Touching the space where her necklace should have been she scoured the room until she located it, and her earrings, on the bedside table. They were on top of a pile of hardback, cloth bound books. She lifted the cover of the first one: _The Music of the Primes – Why an Unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters_.

Her internal universe righted itself; now she understood why the whole world smelled like Spencer Reid this morning.

It took her two goes to get to the bedroom door. She opened it quietly, in case he was sleeping on the sofa. As it turned out, the sofa was empty, but the blanket she usually borrowed when she stayed over was screwed up on the floor by the side of it, as if it had been kicked off.

Sleepily, she navigated around the corner. Reid was sitting in his pyjamas, chewing the end of his pencil, a cryptic crossword on the table in front of him. She watched him for a few moments, mostly because she was too tired to think of a thing to say. He looked up.

"Oh, hey," he said.

"Hi," she said, feeling oddly shy.

There was something off in the way he was looking at her. She couldn't quite place it, but she was sure it hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him.

She pulled her sleeves over her hands in that self-conscious way she had seen Alice do in the past. Bizarrely, it helped.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes," she nodded, and then stayed very still until the fireworks behind her eyeballs had stopped. "Although I think nodding might be out for the foreseeable future."

Reid laughed, and the wariness in his features receded.

"Yeah, you were pretty out of it last night," he said, gesturing to the sofa. "I figured it was my turn."

"Thanks," she smiled.

There was one of those awkward pauses; Grace squirmed. She had thought that they'd been friends long enough now to have got past them. As abruptly as it had appeared, the awkwardness evaporated.

"You want some blueberry pancakes?"

Grace's smile slid up the side of her face.

"I think I would kill for some blueberry pancakes."

Spencer grinned and started rummaging in his fridge. Grace took a seat at the table, feeling quite small and out of place. She glanced at the cryptic clues, thought better of it and picked her nails instead. She could feel Reid's eyes on her as he cooked – it was making her uncomfortable.

"How was Utah?" she asked, chewing her lip.

"Pretty bad," he said, and she heard the frown in his voice. "Really bad. We got him in the end."

Grace nodded. In the quiet that followed, as Reid made pancakes and deposited maple syrup on the table, she wriggled her toes inside over-warm socks. To stop herself feeling awkward she got up and found the appropriate cutlery.

"How was Nevada?" he asked, putting a large plate of pancakes on the table.

Grace thought about Melissa Landry's ghost, with eyes the size of dinner plates, and the house overlooking rows of silent, battered women, and the way the screaming hadn't stopped until she was halfway back to Washington.

"We got him in the end," she said.

0o0

_Do I fear the sleepless nights? You have no idea how long the dark lasts when you cannot close your eyes to it._

_\- Tyler Knott Gregson_


	12. The Evilution of Frank

**Essential Listening – I Can't Breathe, by Gary Numan**

**0o0**

"So this is the big secret, huh?" Prentiss said, setting several pizza boxes on the kitchen counter. She whistled through her teeth.

"I knew it," exclaimed Garcia. "I knew it as soon as you saw it."

Grace gave her a lopsided smile. She had, too, in a way, even though for days she'd been telling herself that she'd only put the deposit down to shut Sophie and Max up. She'd told Lightfoot and he'd somehow managed to arrange a delivery of yellow and orange roses an hour after she'd got the keys.

He'd had to have help, he wasn't that technically minded. Arnold, maybe, or Belle.

She was grateful; it had made her feel less foolish, and less remote.

"So, we gonna get a tour?" Prentiss asked, grinning.

Grace showed them the dining room, the bedrooms, the kitchen – she even gave them a cursory glance at the dark garden with its protected rose bushes. Reid hung back as Garcia and Emily talked about shipping her stuff over from the UK and buying future. He had been quieter since their cases had taken them to different ends of the same desert and he'd forced her to sleep her migraine off*. It worried Grace, because after those first few grumpy days in New Orleans, he'd been open and friendly around her. She didn't like what this new edginess might mean.

Grace saved the book room for last. The elderly couple that had sold it to her had left her the bookcases and the gorgeous antique writing desk; the cases couldn't be moved anyway and the desk wouldn't fit in their new place. Grace had agreed solely on the basis that they would accept a modern form of Rose Rent – the pick of the roses (which, contrary to the assertions of the estate agent, she was intending to keep), delivered to Florida by next day delivery each summer on their wedding anniversary.

They are their pizza on the floor of the book room.

Grace's stuff – a meagre selection which she had been living off since she flew out – had been augmented by a desk lamp, a sleeping bag, a pillow and a dragon plant. There were rolled up in the corner, the plant having taken up temporary residence on the writing desk.

"Sleeping on the floor, though," Emily observed, through a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. "That's gotta suck."

"Still better than the cadet house," said Grace. "And there's a bathtub."

"Luxury!"

They laughed and Reid asked about how she was intending to fill the bookshelves – a subject that they were both happy to expand on.

All four of their mobiles went off simultaneously, to a chorus of mutual groans.

Prentiss got to hers first and then Garcia confirmed it. Reluctantly, they abandoned their pizza.

If Hotch or JJ hadn't called them themselves and the address was in Washington, it was bound to be a bad one.

0o0o0o0

The street was swarming with law enforcement.

No press yet, fortunately, but it would only be a matter of time before someone got wind of the murder and turned the road into a temporary encampment.

A mutilated corpse in the apartment of a trusted, long-serving member of the FBI was the kind of story a journalist would give their eye teeth for. Hell, Grace would probably get a text from Sophie in the morning, asking her what all the fuss was about.

They were walked upstairs by a couple of Military Police Officers, who – from the look of them – had seen what was up there and were profoundly glad they didn't have a background in forensics.

Grace got a brief glimpse of a sophisticated apartment full of books and artwork (including a beautiful model of an early steam train) before it hit her. Like the others, she could taste the grim, metallic tang of a large quantity of fresh blood in the air, but (and it was so strong that she had to pause on the threshold) she could also feel the presence of the woman whose blood was decorating the walls.

Steeling herself, she stepped under the cordon stretched across the bedroom door. She looked down at the remains of the unfortunate woman on the bed; the cordon seemed suddenly unnecessary. No one was coming in this room that didn't absolutely have to.

She glanced around her senior agent's room, taking in the personal items beneath the gore, feeling at once ghoulish and invasive. It seemed oddly cosy, not a word she had hitherto associated with Jason Gideon. Who knew, for example, that he was so fascinated by birds?

Not for the first time she wished that their latest victim would stop screaming – or at least, that she couldn't hear it. Grace compressed her lips, examining the expertly made cuts. Someone had known exactly what they were doing.

She heard Morgan come in, a loud presence as usual, and she ducked around a forensic technician who was industriously dusting Gideon's shaving kit for prints.

Aware that they were only doing their job, she bit back an acerbic comment and positioned herself just inside the door, where she could keep an eye on things. Hotch looked particularly cagey tonight; she recognised the expression. She'd seen it on DCI Lightfoot's face, standing in a cold kitchen in March.

She shuddered involuntarily.

"Where's Gideon?" Morgan asked, as the others mooched around the apartment, trying to avoid looking like they were casting an investigative eye over anything. There was a sense that they might get kicked out if they were too obvious. Accordingly, Hotch kept his voice low.

"We called his cell," he said, glancing over at the table, which had been set for dinner. "It's right there. Seems he left in a hurry."

A mild look of outraged astonishment passed over Morgan's features.

"PD thinks he did this?" he asked, incredulous.

Grace could kind of see why they might, though she kept this to herself. She ground her teeth, trying to edit out the sounds of distress emanating from the dead woman on the bed.

"They have six witnesses who saw him running down the street, covered in blood and wielding a gun," Hotch pointed out, quietly.

The team shared a look of high tension. As Max would have said, this was extremely, very not good.

"Okay," said Morgan. "He was probably chasin' the son of a bitch that _did_ do this."

"But _they_ don't know that," said Grace. She'd been at the wrong end of enough IPCC investigations to know that the opinions of Gideon's friends and team mates wouldn't count for anything from here on in. "To them he's their best suspect."

Morgan shot her a scathing look.

"Either way, we're under strict orders not to get in the way of the investigation," said Hotch. Grace watched JJ's eyes widen as she took a look at the carnage in the bedroom. "Gideon's a suspect," Hotch continued. "We're his colleagues."

"Conflict of interest," JJ agreed as Morgan shook his head in annoyance. "There's no way they'll ask for our help."

"Which," said Hotch, "he needs badly right now."

"Who spoke to him last?" Morgan asked, already in full investigative mode.

"I did," said Hotch. "About two hours ago."

There was something close to recognition on her face when Prentiss stepped in to look at the body; Grace made a note of it, in case she got a chance to ask about it later.

"What did he say?" Reid asked.

"He said he was late for a date," said Hotch.

As one, the team turned to stare at the mess in the bedroom. Reid broke away, using the momentum of a forensic technician to get a closer look at the corpse without anyone asking too many questions.

"Do we even know who she is?" Morgan asked.

"An old school friend."

"Sarah," said Grace, without thinking. "Gideon mentioned it," she added on their looks, feeling that 'the voices in my head told me', wouldn't go down too well at this juncture.

"We're conflicted out of the investigation," Hotch went on. "We're just here to answer any questions the MPD might have." He looked at them for a moment, and with barely a pause added, "So we need to assess what we can, while we can."

Grace felt instantly better in the knowledge that theirs was a team that didn't abandon its own. She had rather expected this to be the case, but things might have been different in the FBI for all she knew.

Reid returned from his cursory examination of the victim and suddenly they were all business.

"The evisceration of the torso, removal of various organs – this guy's clearly a sexually sadistic psychopath," he elaborated.

"He's well-versed with a scalpel. He's done this before," said Prentiss, grimly.

Grace studied her friends' faces. It was odd, she thought: they all had the look of a group of people very carefully Not Jumping to Conclusions. Not about Gideon's guilt – that would be easily dismissed by anyone that knew him – but about the scene as a whole, Sarah's injuries.

"We need to at least get photos," said Emily; Hotch nodded.

"JJ – take your cell phone, get as many as you can as quickly as you can, and get them to Garcia," he said. He didn't need to tell her to be covert.

They shuffled off to gently poke around their colleague's apartment, as subtly as they could. Grace picked the bathroom on the basis that the UnSub might have tried to clean up after the fact. Given that there were three techs in there already with the same idea, it was unlikely he had left them any evidence, or they might have been a bit more excited about their work.

She gave them a friendly wave from the door as three, anonymous, masked faces glanced in her direction. She moved back to the bed; over JJ telling Garcia to get a move on, the screaming of Gideon's late school friend had intensified.

Grace felt hot, too enclosed.

It was too soon after the fact for whatever was left of Sarah to be any use – if, indeed, she hung around at all, so there was no use assuring her that the team would chase this guy to the very gates of hell if they had to. She wouldn't have been able to listen now, anyway, she was still caught up in the torture of the last, painful minutes of her life.

"What a horrible way to die," she said, aloud. The technician bending over the far end of the bed agreed.

"I'm glad I didn't get a chance to eat before I came out," he said.

She found Hotch and Morgan prowling around the apartment, like a pair of tigers in snappy suits. Taking up residence by a bookcase, she pretended to look for any sign of disturbance along the shelves and indulged in a bit of good-natured eavesdropping.

Clearly, they knew something she didn't and none of them wanted to say anything out loud in case the MPD took it the wrong way.

"No sign of forced entry," Hotch observed, from somewhere by the front door.

"Why?"

There was a pause as the agents looked around, then Morgan began to infer: "Everything is as it was," he speculated. "Nothing has been disturbed. Wine poured but not drank. The victim simply let the assailant in – and why wouldn't she? She was waitin' for Gideon, it's his home."

Another pause. Grace imagined her team mates sharing an eloquent look. When Agent Morgan continued, the tone of the discussion has shifted, evolved.

"Forensics won't find any defensive wounds," he said; Grace nodded. They definitely knew who they were dealing with – Morgan wouldn't make that kind of supposition without reason.

"Why?" he said, rhetorically. "Because she didn't defend herself. She couldn't. He came here lookin' for Gideon, but found _her_."

_Someone Gideon had arrested, perhaps? Or – worse – someone he had almost arrested, and pissed off enough that he'd come looking for revenge._

"Now he knew he didn't have a lot of time, but here she is, and here he stands."

The voices moved towards the bedroom and Grace followed. They stood around the bed, surveying the carnage with practiced eyes.

"A sexual sadist," Morgan continued. "A psychopath with a need to kill as natural as his need to breathe."

"He moved swiftly," said Prentiss. "Every stroke of his blade exact, from lower torso to throat. She was awake the entire time."

_Yes_, thought Grace, as the wailing intensified. _She watched the whole thing, helpless. Knowing he was cutting away at her, piece by piece._

"Until, mercifully, she passed away," Prentiss concluded, sighing. "The toxicology report will find high levels of ketamine in her blood. He opened her up, removed her lower right rib – which is missing –"

Grace frowned, looking at the wound. This guy had such a specific calling card that the others were bound to know what to expect. She just wished that she did. The skin at the bottom of her ribcage felt tighter, suddenly – not painful as such, just _wrong_ in an indefinable kind of way. She rubbed it absently and met Reid's eyes across the blood-soaked bed.

Grace gave him a look: surely he should be staring at the very dead corpse of their sort-of-boss's girlfriend, rather than at her.

"Prentiss," said Morgan, suddenly. "Left hand."

Emily pulled a latex glove out of her back pocket and carefully pried Sarah's fingers open. It was harder than it looked, given the drying blood and beginnings of rigor mortis. A grisly, bloody bone was in Sarah's hand, gobbets of flesh still adhering to it."

"_Gross_," Grace breathed, as the wailing behind her eyeballs became ungodly shrieks.

"Part of the rib-bone," said Prentiss, with a certain amount of resignation. This gory detail seemed to confirm something to them all.

"Frank's back," Morgan grimaced.

"If this is who we think it is," said Reid, as Grace willed him to elaborate further. "He took the rib bones as gifts for Jane."

"And yet this one he gave back to Sarah," Prentiss frowned. "Why?"

"It's not for Sarah, it's for us," said Hotch. "It's a message."

0o0

They reconvened in the living room, ushered out by a coroner who went straight to business as if eviscerated women were an everyday occurrence in up-town Washington DC.

"We have to tell the police what we've found," said Emily, but Hotch shook his head.

_I wish you'd tell me_, Grace thought glumly. While she understood the need for subterfuge at this stage, it wasn't much fun to be kept in the dark. To make matters worse, the arrival of the coroner had increased the pitch of the screaming, as if Sarah had realised that this really was it.

Sweat had already broken out on the back of her neck; she was fighting the urge to run out of the apartment, down the street and as far away as she could get from the noise.

Professionalism and the something that had been haunting Reid's expression earlier in the day stopped her. Clearly, he already felt she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and she was in no mood to confirm that suspicion. Right now, Gideon needed them.

"Wait," Hotch advised.

"For what?" Prentiss asked, surprised.

"If we know anything about Frank, he wouldn't-a left a trace of his DNA in the apartment," said Morgan.

"There are a number of ways this scene could be interpreted," said Agent Hotchner, softly. "And all of them could implicate Gideon."

Grace watched her fellow agents' faces, wondering – for people who observed body language for a living – how none of them had ever worked out how to avoid looking shifty. Perhaps they had never needed to before.

"As long as Frank's out there, we can't afford to stop and explain any of it."

Prentiss nodded.

Grace was beginning to think that perhaps she didn't want to know who Frank was after all. She wondered whether anyone would mind her stepping outside for a minute or two – she badly needed to clear her head.

"Last time he did all of this for Jane," said Reid, with a glance in Grace's direction, as if he could sense her discomfort.

_How did he always seem to know?_

"Things seem to have changed radically," said Hotch.

"Maybe she's dead," Prentiss suggested, and then helpfully answered several of Grace's more pressing questions. "They had a lover's quarrel and he killed her?"

"He came here looking for Gideon," said Reid, voicing their main fear. "Maybe he found him…"

"Let's go find out where Gideon went," Morgan suggested, and Prentiss nodded.

They hurried downstairs, Grace following at what she hoped was a dignified interval. Gratefully, she gulped the fresh air at the bottom of the stairwell and slipped into the entrance to the nearest alley.

Although the sounds of Sarah's distress were duller out here, they weren't gone entirely, and Grace knew she only had a minute or two before she had to head back. She needed a calm head. Closing her eyes, she focussed on her breathing. It was a few seconds before she became conscious of a presence a few feet in front of her.

Briefly, she considered reaching for her gun, but decided that it felt like too hesitant a presence to be a threat. Opening her eyes, Spencer Reid's worried face swam into view. She was surprised to see suspicion there.

"You okay?"

"Dizzy," she said. "The blood."

The level of distrust increased somewhat.

"You're lying," he pointed out.

"No I'm not –"

Reid gave her a shrewd look.

"It's my job to know when people are lying," he reminded her. "And while you may be better at it than I am, I can still tell."

Grace pulled a face. This was the last thing she wanted to have to talk about right now.

"It's nothing," she began, but Spencer interrupted.

"The other night –" he paused as someone walked briskly past the mouth of the alley. He stepped closer to her, though Grace wasn't sure if he'd intended to or not; she'd never really appreciated before how much the man could loom if he wanted to. He lowered his voice, too, though who he thought would overhear them she didn't know. "When you got back from Nevada you were talking in your sleep."

Grace gave him a searching look – he seemed about as awkward as she felt.

"You were watching me sleep?" she asked, astonished.

He waved her objection away, "You fell asleep on me on the AMTRACK," he said, faintly annoyed. "There wasn't much I could do about it."

Grace reflected that this was fair enough and nodded for him to continue.

"You were talking about ghosts," he said, studying her closely. "And how much of a pain in the – er – behind – they could be at a crime-scene, and –"

"People say all manner of shit when they're asleep," said Grace, but to her horror, Spencer shook his head. She felt her heart rate pick up, and hoped he couldn't see that, too.

"Not like this," he said. "You sounded like you were giving a briefing, and when I checked your report from Nevada –"

"You read my _report_?" Grace demanded, but he ignored her.

"– it matched pretty close with what happened out there, except for the part where the ghosts of your victims led you to their graves. You seem to have missed that bit."

He looked at her expectantly; Grace backed up a little, made contact with the wall of the alley and tried to decide what to do.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked, cagily.

"I saw your face in there," he said, nodding towards the door to the apartment block. "And Gideon never talks about his personal life with the rest of us."

"He might."

"Ghosts aren't real," he insisted, though he sounded almost annoyed about the statement.

"Okay."

"'Okay', ghosts _aren't_ real, or 'Okay', I'm just humouring you?"

God she wished the Guv' were here. It had been so much easier having people around who knew that this stuff was real. She stared back at her friend, trying to think of something to say to him that wouldn't result in her either being thrown off the team or into the nearest asylum.

Fortunately for her, providence intervened in the form of Emily Prentiss. She gave them both a very strange look.

"C'mon," she said, and vanished into the street.

Grace made to follow her, but Reid caught her arm; he gave her a look that suggested that he was far from satisfied. Cursing his eidetic memory, she slipped past him, emerging into the street.

"Frank had to have come out the same way down this street," said Morgan, striding towards them. "If they saw Gideon, they saw Frank."

"Well, we know Frank'll do whatever it takes to blend in and not stand out," said Prentiss."

"To avoid attractin' attention he would-a simply walked calmly outta that crime scene."

"The evisceration of Sarah, though, means he would have been soaked in her blood," Reid interjected, apparently content to let Grace be until they no longer had an audience.

"No, he had access to Gideon's closet," Prentiss corrected him. "He cleans up, gets a change of clothes – he's out."

"That bathroom was spotless," Grace pointed out.

Morgan nodded.

"He left no trace of evidence at the crime scene."

"Gideon said he dumped it en-route," said Hotch, gingerly carrying a white plastic bag that the techs obviously hadn't got to yet. Grace wondered what he was going to do with it; his expression wasn't giving much away.

"You spoke with Gideon?" Prentiss sounded hopeful.

"Where is he, Hotch?" Morgan asked.

"He's safe."

Grace relaxed very slightly. That was the first good news they'd had all night.

"Well, that's all the proof we need, right?" Prentiss exclaimed. "We can turn it over to the MPD now."

"No way," Grace insisted. "If they're anything like the ones back home they'll have Gideon locked up answering questions for the next week, and the rest of us so deep in red tape we'll need life jackets."

Hotch nodded.

"By the time this comes back from the lab, Frank's long gone," he said, lifting the bag.

"If the cops find out we're hiding evidence and a material witness from them," said Morgan, a warning in his voice.

"We're not hiding evidence," said Hotch. "We'll give this to forensics and have them search for DNA – we'll look for Frank."

Grace looked past him. A kid on a skateboard was whizzing up the street towards them with all the confidence of youth.

"Agent Morgan?" he asked; Morgan stared at him.

"What the hell?" said Prentiss.

"They say beauty can cover a multitude of sins," said the boy.

"What?" said Morgan.

"While underneath it all, we all look exactly the same."

"That's creepy," Grace observed.

"That's Frank!" Morgan exclaimed, urgently. "He said that to me in the diner!"

"Give me Jane, or I'll kill them all," the kid continued.

"All who?" Grace asked him.

"Frank thinks we have Jane?" Morgan guessed.

"We need to find her, fast," said Hotch,

Then in the spirit of enterprising thirteen year olds the world over, the boy held out his hand.

"Can I have my ten bucks now?"

"Unlikely," said Grace, as they all started searching the street.

She wasn't sure if there had been a small movement, or if the spirit of Sarah was still clinging to her, even outside, but Grace looked up at the roof of a smaller building that was tucked between two apartment blocks.

"Hotch," she said, keeping her eyes on the deeper patch of shadows.

He followed her gaze.

"Reid, get this to forensics," he said, passing him the bag. "And keep an eye on the boy – we'll need a description."

Grace and Hotch hurried across the street, Prentiss and Morgan close behind them. They made quick work of the stairs, but the roof was already empty.

"Scuff marks," said Grace, standing near the edge of the roof. "Good view."

"Damn," said Morgan.

"This guy is like a ghost," Prentiss complained.

"We need to get moving," said Hotch.

He raised his eyebrows as Grace put her hand up, holstering her weapon.

"Who the hell is Frank?"

0o0

*Not so much forced as, she fell asleep on him and he didn't know what to do with her.


	13. Checkmate

**Wow, time flies, doesn't it? That's it for this ficisode. Grace's adventures continue – keep an eye out for the first chapter of the next ficisode in a fortnight's time. If you really want to find it, click that Author Alert button down there ;) Keep your eyes peeled for a very silly Harry Potter drabble next Friday.**

**Thanks for reading! Love you all xx**

**0o0**

**Essential Listening – Is There a Ghost, by Band of Horses**

**0o0**

Grace had the first no-answer on the call list. She tried three times before bumping it up to Hotch. They didn't have time to waste on people being out. The speed at which Anderson left the room was nothing to what happened when JJ had called Rebecca Bryant.

There was a good chance that the words, 'He's not Agent Gideon, is he?' would be tattooed on the inside of all of their brains for years to come.

They were too late, of course.

Grace and Emily surveyed the young woman's corpse with an air of detachment their friends did not feel. Blood had pooled in every dimple of Rebecca's body; even though he knew they were on their way, Frank had taken his time.

Reid was as white as a sheet and shaking slightly as Hotch, grim-faced, opened the curtains to shed more light on the scene. They had known this woman – they had saved her. She had thought she was safe.

It had badly shaken them.

"Can you hear her, too?" Reid hissed, far closer to her than Grace had realised. His tone was vaguely accusatory.

Glancing at her friend's face she realised it was anger that he was shaking with, rather than disgust.

She could, but she wasn't about to admit it.

"Guys," said Prentiss, lifting Rebecca's bloodied hand. "We've got a note from Frank – 7 a.m., Union Station."

"All the other targets on that list are safe and accounted for," said Reid, frowning.

"We've missed someone or something," said Hotch, "Now that he's set a meeting –"

"He's gonna raise the stakes," Morgan finished. "Just like last time. He's gonna make it impossible for us not to trade Jane for whoever he's got."

0o0o0o0

_Children. Why is it always children?_

The news of Tracey Bell's abduction had percolated through by the time they had Jane in a suitable interrogation cell. Grace watched her though the glass: a woman who was both devastatingly lost and perfectly centred all at once.

She struck Grace as incredibly brave.

Jane seemed determined to stop Frank hurting anyone else, even though she loved him. Grace could understand _that_ alright.

Though she was obviously troubled by the violence, Jane gave them Frank's name and background as if she was telling her family about a treasured boyfriend. Any talk of brutality shut her down, but she seemed resolute that this would be his last chance to hurt anybody.

"Is it wrong?" she asked. "What I feel for Frank?"

"You can't choose who you fall in love with," Grace whispered, in perfect time with Emily. It seemed to reassure Jane, anyway.

"Maybe you thought you could change him," said Hotch gently. "And you did, too, for a time."

"Yes," said Jane, relieved that someone understood.

"Until the desire to kill overwhelmed him, and you saw that, didn't you Jane," said Hotch. "You saw it in him."

"Yes," she said again, much more tremulously.

Grace watched her face raptly, wondering what it felt like to be in Jane's skin – to have that certain knowledge that the man you loved had killed over and over again –and to see that capability rising to the surface.

"She must have been so afraid," she murmured.

"I think she spent her whole life afraid," said Reid, and Grace nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Sorry," he said.

There was a pause while they listened to Jane talk about her argument with Frank, and how she'd come to Washington, alone and frightened.

"You were probably too busy listening to all the departed spirits to hear me come in," Reid grumbled, sourly.

She shot him a look; he was unusually grim and oddly sulky. Grace couldn't decide whether it was just the case or her refusal to talk to him about ghosts. He glared at her, which gave her her answer.

They'd been pretty close up to now – she didn't like the idea of falling out with him.

Jane's voice brought her attention back to the interrogation room. The woman was crying now, the kind of tears that never actually help, but always spring forth in the face of things that cannot now be stopped.

0o0o0o0

There really was nothing like an early morning take down to wake you up. The traces of a night spent chasing their own tails in Quantico seemed to evaporate as she, JJ and Reid donned their stab vests behind the specially designated cordon at the end of the road. There was little chance that Frank would be here – ever the show-man they all expected him to keep his 7 a.m. appointment at the station – but with the life of a missing ten year old hanging in the balance, it was worth taking precautions.

The maintenance man let them in, throwing his keys from hand to hand as he walked, as if heavily armed bands of police regularly toured his block.

JJ pulled Reid up as they got to the fifth floor.

"No matter what happens this time," she said. "We don't split up. Clear?"

"Crystal," said Reid, and that was when Grace's ears popped.

A creak on the floor of the corridor ahead stole her attention and she froze – the cop behind her walked straight into her.

"Cramp," she lied, by way of apology.

Reid caught her eye as they covered the corner outside Ms Breitkopf's apartment. She stared him down, which was quite a feat as she was doing it through a dead woman's torso.

The spirit was watching her, the way they did when they noticed you noticing. Grace met her eyes when Reid checked his gun.

Mary Breitkopf had been a beautiful woman. She had chosen to grace the spirit world in a cocktail dress, her hair piled high on her head. Although she appeared to be made entirely of sepia tones, Grace thought it might once have been auburn.

There was something urgent about her presence, but there was no time to find out what. Grace's having a bad feeling about something wasn't going to hold anyone up – not until Tracey Bell was safe and Frank was either dead or behind bars.

JJ kicked the door the rest of the way in and the maintenance man wisely took refuge back around the corner.

The rooms were dark and dank, and – ultimately – empty. Grace kept her eyes on Mary's ghost; she was leading them further in. Grace followed Mary and the team followed her.

The bedroom had that deep scent of decay that Grace had hitherto associated with crypts and – sure enough – when Reid opened the curtains they were confronted with the desiccated corpse of a woman, covered in bunches of elderly flowers.

"She's been there a while," JJ observed tightly, as one member of the SWAT team went and found somewhere more private in which to vomit.

Grace nodded. Mary's ghost was standing sentinel beside another door. She wasn't remotely interested in being found. Grace touched JJ's shoulder and they moved to cover Reid as he opened the door.

Tracey's hands were tied and her mouth gagged; she looked incredibly small, bundled up beneath the dusty silk dresses, greying with age.

JJ and Grace holstered their weapons and reached out for her. Tracey practically flew at JJ, who ushered her through the bedroom, keeping herself between the little girl and the unsightly remains of Mrs Breitkopf.

Spencer called Hotch to give the all clear and soon Tracey could be heard thanking Gideon on the phone.

They'd lost Jane – Frank's final victim – but at least Tracey would be going home to her parents today. You had to count the victories, or you'd go mental.

SWAT moved out, eager to put some distance between themselves and the late tenant; someone called forensics. The mechanics of a much more relaxed investigation began to rumble into motion. A couple of lonely looking MPDs took up stations outside the front door.

Through it all, Grace kept her eyes on Mary. She had known exactly the kind of boy she had raised, and while she may not have been able to help any of the people he had killed over the years (and Grace had checked the case file, there were _so_ many), she had been determined to help Tracey Bell. Especially when she had noticed that one of the FBI agents raiding her resting place could see her.

Now she was standing in the shadows by the dresser, looking as though she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself.

"He's gone," Grace said, softly. "He can't hurt anybody else."

"Who are you talking to?"

Reid stood in the doorway, watching her with narrowed eyes. He glanced at the bed, and then around the room, just in case.

Grace looked back at the phantom in the corner, staring impassively at her own corpse.

"It must be a terrible thing to watch yourself decay," she remarked.

"Well, old age comes to us all, I guess."

She shared a wry smile with Mary Breitkopf as he joined her beside the bed, even though his tone had suggested that her lack of an answer was still bugging the hell out of him.

Grace sighed, and then he did, too. Either way, she reflected, she might lose a friend today. Given the odds, she decided to do something really stupid.

She took his hand and he jumped at the contact, but not nearly as much as he jumped when he followed her gaze to the corner by the dresser.

_Points for not screaming_, Grave thought, though she could feel him trembling.

"That's –"

"Yes."

"But –"

"I know."

"You –"

She nodded, pleased that he hadn't let go of her hand; despite what had to be a bad scare he still felt he could trust her, at least for the moment.

"But it's _impossible_," he blurted out, desperately.

Grace made urgent shushing noises until she was convinced the MPD weren't coming to investigate why Spencer's voice was so high-pitched all of a sudden. He was gripping her hand as if he thought his grasp of reality would fall away if he let go. Or maybe it was fear of the ghost in the corner, who was watching them in a passive sort of way.

He stared at Grace.

"What – what do we do now?" he asked, after a moment.

Grace shrugged.

"That all depends on her."

She nodded towards the bed.

"Does she know – that Frank –"

Mary was looking less sepia now and more greyscale. She was fading away.

"I'd say so," said Grace. "Also, she can hear you."

Spencer gave her a wide-eyed look that would otherwise have made her laugh – but there would be time for that, and for explanations, later. This time was for Mary.

Grace lifted her free hand and spread her fingers wide, sensing all the little checks and balances of the universe and tipping them ever-so-slightly over the edge.

On the bed, bunches and bunches of dusty, blue and white flowers burst into bloom, as though time itself had been reversed.

Across the room, Mary Breitkopf smiled, properly, for the first time in decades.

Grace kept her eyes on that smile, hand in hand with a terrified Spencer Reid, until it and the woman it belonged to faded, and the shadows were only shadows once more.

0o0o0o0

Agent Hotchner stared Chief Strauss down.

She was pissed, and he'd given her good reason. Questioning his effectiveness was only ever going to lead to one thing – and she would have known that if she paid more attention to him and his team, and less attention to politics.

His assessment of her relationship with her children had been a little too accurate for her liking. No one enjoyed hearing their flaws laid bare, particularly by someone they were attempting to strong-arm.

"Let me tell you about my team," he said, as her arms folded and eyes narrowed.

"Agent Morgan fought to protect his identity from the very people who could save him. Why? Because trust has to be earned and there are very few people he truly trusts.

"Agent Pearce is holding back because she was part of a team that trusted her in London and this is a world away from that. She knows she's different and she's afraid that any moment someone is going to notice and put her on a plane back to England.

"Reid's intellect is a shield, which protects him from his emotion, and at the moment his shield is under repair.

"Prentiss over-compensates because she doesn't yet feel that she's a part of the team. She needn't worry.

"Every day, Agent Jareau fields dozens of requests for our team, and every night she goes home hoping she's made the right choices.

"Garcia fills her office with figurines and colour to remind herself to smile as the horror fills her screens, and Agent Gideon…" he paused, letting his carefully chosen words sink in. "Agent Gideon in many ways is damned by his profound knowledge of others. Which is why he shares so little of himself – yet he pours his heart into every case we handle."

Chief Strauss watched him, a deep frown on her carefully understated face. He met her gaze, confident.

"I stand by my actions – and by my team. If you think that you can find a better person for the job – good luck."

He made his way to the door, but Strauss called him back.

"Agent Hotchner…"

He took in her unsettled expression.

"How do I know you favour your son?" he asked; Strauss glanced at the boy's picture. "I'm good at my job," he told her, with a perfunctory shrug.

0o0

'_If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'_

\- Freidrich Neitzsche


End file.
